Oregon 550 issues

[+The Two Bears]

HELP !

My mum has a new (to her, second hand really)Oregon 550 gps and all is well apart from the fact that when loading pocket queries on it will always put some of the caches into the "found" section even though Mum hasn't actually found them. We have tried clearing off all the gpx and making sure the memory card is empty but all to no avail.

Any ideas on what to do next to stop this happening ??

Thanks

[+t4e]

HELP !

My mum has a new (to her, second hand really)Oregon 550 gps and all is well apart from the fact that when loading pocket queries on it will always put some of the caches into the "found" section even though Mum hasn't actually found them. We have tried clearing off all the gpx and making sure the memory card is empty but all to no avail.

Any ideas on what to do next to stop this happening ??

Thanks

 

since it is a used unit the person you got it from obviously did not clear everything and you seeing their finds

 

plug the unit in the computer go to Garmin directory and delete the file called "geocache visits"

 

once she will find some caches on her own and will mark them found the file will be recreated fresh

 

that is the same file she will use to upload "field notes" to log her finds on geocaching.com

Edited January 1, 2012 by t4e

[+Cacheoholic]

Deleting the geocache_visits file will not get rid of the found caches. They are in an inaccessible area of the memory. There are 2 ways to get rid of them.

 

1) One at a time. Goto Main Menu>Geocaches>Show Found>[select geocache]>Log Attempt->Unattempted. This will put the cache back on the Unfound List and it will decrement the total find count by one.

 

2) All at once. Master reset. This will also clear all user data so it may not be desirable. Touch & hold upper left corner of the screen during startup.

[+dfx]

Deleting the geocache_visits file will not get rid of the found caches. They are in an inaccessible area of the memory.

 

We are talking about caches getting marked as found upon load of a PQ. Deleting the visits file will get rid of that. Not immediately, but on the next load of a PQ.

[+The Two Bears]

Thanks for the advice guys - Have tried deleting the visits file and running a new PQ and the same thing happens, certain caches go in the "found" section, will try the master reset and then see if that does anything !

[+Unobtainium]

You may have a GPX file left on the unit. Have a look in /Garmin/GPX for any files. These can either be on the unit or the memory card.

 

This is a long shot, but check there isn't a geocache_visits.txt file on the memory card. I don't think the unit would create these, but the previous owner might have.

 

Andy

[+lodgebarn]

And also they can be any sub-folders e.g. I sometimes have mine in a Garmin\gpx\caches folder. I would search the whole device and SD card for any files with a .gpx suffix and see what pops up. You may also see files such as geocaches.gpx or GC2PMP6.gpx.

[+The Two Bears]

thankyou,thankyou for all your advice looked everywhere for gpx files and deleted everything we could see but the problem was still there was did the master reset and all is now well !! (until Mum does something else wrong !!)

[+Cacheoholic]

It wasn’t your moms fault. I’m guessing the GPS was bought second hand from a local person and that person naturally found many of the local caches with the GPS. The found caches are stored internally in inaccessible memory. The seller should have done a master reset to purge out all user data to protect their own privacy. They didn’t. You loaded a Pocket Query with your local caches which included many caches the previously owner found. The GPS parses the GPX file during startup, finds the caches that were found by the previous owner and marks them as found. No one told the GPS it changed owners.

[+myotis]

Sounds like something was corrupt in internal memory. Deleting all gpx files should have reset this.

[+Cacheoholic]

Don’t think it works that way.

 

Once you find a cache an entry is made internally in the area of the unit’s memory that you cannot access via mass storage. Delete the gpx file containing the found cache and the cache goes away. Load a gpx file that contains that found cache and the GPS will recognize it as been found and load it as found.

 

Please check me on this. Mark a cache as found. Delete all gpx files and the cache is gone. Load a PQ containing that previously found cache, use the send to GPS or gpx button to load that previously found. Start up the GPS and see if it loads as “Found”.