Fangamon Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 (edited) Took my Etrex 20 for a walk in the city. Latest firms with CN and Topo and Bluechart. All was fine until it CRASHED OUT after just ~30 mins showing no satellites for about a further ~20 minutes to sort it's BS out, then it slowly came back losing all the route info it had just gathered! Rubbishy thing almost got launched into the nearest trash can! This thing has so much potential but can't cut even the most simple things like finding where I left the car. ...seriously though it's not that unexpected for the unreliable 20 but I thought for once this thing could be useful getting around in and around the side streets, NOPE! I guess the oldy goldy 'H' gets first preference again. No maps but it always gets me home, always! Edited June 18, 2014 by Odourless Quote Link to comment
insig Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 If you are having that many issues with it, why not sell it and save yourself the agony of using it? Quote Link to comment
+BAMBOOZLE Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 While I'm not a fan of the Etrex line too much has been written on the forum regarding the Etrex 20's function and reliability being very good. Something is not right with you're particular unit, try another one. Quote Link to comment
Fangamon Posted June 18, 2014 Author Share Posted June 18, 2014 Lol, I work in the GIS industry... We at work have these things as drink coasters Quote Link to comment
+Panther&Pine Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 I'd assume the maps or the gpx files (if applicable) is the problem. Quote Link to comment
insig Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 I'd take off all the maps except one or two and then see what happens. Quote Link to comment
+Panther&Pine Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 Lol, I work in the GIS industry... We at work have these things as drink coasters Then why buy that particular one? Quote Link to comment
Fangamon Posted June 18, 2014 Author Share Posted June 18, 2014 I bought it for myself. It works great for fishing but it's not very good for anything else. Perhaps it's just mine but I think not. Quote Link to comment
Fangamon Posted June 18, 2014 Author Share Posted June 18, 2014 Oh yes I only have one or two maps on at a time and some others stored on the SD card in a different folder. The tile limit on the 20 is 3000 and it won't work properly if you exceed it! Quote Link to comment
+MartyBartfast Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 Well clearly the problems you're experiencing with your Etrex20 cannot be typical, otherwise EVERYBODY would be screaming about it, whereas the majority of the experiences I've see about the 20 are positive, and Sussamb thinks it's brilliant. It seems to me that either: You bought a lemon, and you should have sent it back, if it's still under warranty return it. You're doing something you shouldn't, which is causing all these problems. What you're doing SHOULD be OK, but the way your using it constitutes some sort of edge case and you're triggering a bug which is either undiscovered or uncommon. I would start by going back to basics, remove all maps and everything you've put on it, do a factory reset, and then see how it performs, if it's still broken then return it (if you can) or report it to Garmin, if it's OK after the factory reset then you can then start putting things back on one at a time, and when it breaks again you will have a clue as to what it is that causes it to break, and can then report that to Garmin who may or may not do something about it (but I wouldn't hold my breath). Of course you may think the above is just too much effort, in which case save yourself any further angst by posting it to Sussamb I've had 2 problems with my Etrex30. The first one was it just failed to start up when I'd had it for a couple of months (it got half way through the splash screen and hung for ever), called Garmin support and after trying a few things for 10 minutes - they sent me a new unit. The second was it would come up and seemed OK but would do odd things out in the field, including waypoints & Caches just disappearing, and it rebooting when trying to log a cache - this turned out to be a corrupt .GPX file I had on the unit, which I identified by going through the process I described above. I've seen other people have their GPSs do odd things when they had bad .GPX or bad maps on the unit. I've had no other problems in ~ 2 years. Quote Link to comment
Fangamon Posted June 19, 2014 Author Share Posted June 19, 2014 ^^ cheers, I'll give it a try... Quote Link to comment
+hydrodis Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 When my etrex20 became unstable I just did a "Hard reset" since then it has been fine. Quote Link to comment
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