Hi, If your Garmin eTrex is a Legend and you want to do a ' Reset', pls try: Hard Reset: With the unit turned off, press and hold the follow buttons: PAGE + Enter on the click stick. Then press and release the POWER. The unit will power up asking if you want to release all user data. Select yes, and the unit will be reset. After the master reset, place your unit outside, so that it has a clear view of the sky for 25 to 30 minutes for the unit to acquire new almanac data. This was originally posted and a wealth of other Legend information. Alternately, this has been posted here at FixYa as well.
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Pls see this. Hope this be of initial help/idea. Pls post back how things turned up or should you need additional information. Good luck and kind regards.
Thank you for using FixYa. Posted on Jul 04, 2008.
I've recently upgraded the firmware in my Vista HCx from 2.40/2.30 to 2.60/2.60 with WebUpdater. After this I'm sometimes seeing much degraded accuracy. The peculiarity of this is that I can get 20m (60ft) of inaccuracy shown even with excellent satellite reception. The actual error (compared to the position on the map) is usually much greater, like 50m (150ft). When this happens, and I switch the unit off and immediately switch it on, then it shows the exact position on the map, and the location accuracy shown is 4m (12ft). So the reception is indeed good, only the GPS becomes confused, and doesn't calculate the position correctly. I've asked Garmin support, and they replied that I should perform a reset (PAGE-ENTER-POWERON), but it didn't make a difference.
I've also tried to downgrade the firmware to 2.40, but this only changed the 'Software Version', the 'GPS SW Version' remained 2.60, and I'm still seeing the same problem. Anyone having a similar experience? Anyone having a similar experience?
2.60/2.60 here and I'm getting highly accurate fixes. You don't have 'lock on road' turned on do you? Which map are you using? I'm also getting highly accurate fixes, after turning the unit on. But after some time (half an hour, hour) of walking in not so open terrain, the accuracy just drifts away, and is not always regained when the reception becomes good.
In these cases turning the unit off and then immediately turning it on improves the accuracy by 10x, so there is clearly a bug somewhere. 'lock on road' is turned off. The map is a free tourist map of Hungary made by volunteers from gps tracks (turistautak.hu), and it is quite accurate in most places.
But I also know these routes and places well and have many tracklogs from before and after the firmware upgrade. Anyway, thanks for the response. I've recently upgraded the firmware in my Vista HCx from 2.40/2.30 to 2.60/2.60 with WebUpdater. After this I'm sometimes seeing much degraded accuracy. The peculiarity of this is that I can get 20m (60ft) of inaccuracy shown even with excellent satellite reception. The actual error (compared to the position on the map) is usually much greater, like 50m (150ft). When this happens, and I switch the unit off and immediately switch it on, then it shows the exact position on the map, and the location accuracy shown is 4m (12ft).
So the reception is indeed good, only the GPS becomes confused, and doesn't calculate the position correctly. I've asked Garmin support, and they replied that I should perform a reset (PAGE-ENTER-POWERON), but it didn't make a difference. I've also tried to downgrade the firmware to 2.40, but this only changed the 'Software Version', the 'GPS SW Version' remained 2.60, and I'm still seeing the same problem. Anyone having a similar experience? Not with my Vista HCx, but my wife is having some odd problems with her Venture HC which uses the same chipset. See my post here. Not with my Vista HCx, but my wife is having some odd problems with her Venture HC which uses the same chipset.
See my post here. That is very much how it looks like. For example the red track does the same turns as the blue, but it's wandering further and further away from the real position. That's exactly the same as what I've been observing. I see that you both have the same firmware versions.
So it must be something that goes wrong during the firmware upgrade in some cases, and not in others. Garmin support told me to reset the unit and leave it for 30minutes in clear view of the sky. The reset did erase all the user settings, but didn't seem to have any effect on the GPS receiver, the fix was instantaneous after the reset just as before.
So the problem may be that the GPS chipset itself needs to be reset, but which apparently the normal reset doesn't perform. Thanks for the info, that's very useful! That is very much how it looks like. For example the red track does the same turns as the blue, but it's wandering further and further away from the real position. That's exactly the same as what I've been observing. I see that you both have the same firmware versions. So it must be something that goes wrong during the firmware upgrade in some cases, and not in others.
Garmin support told me to reset the unit and leave it for 30minutes in clear view of the sky. The reset did erase all the user settings, but didn't seem to have any effect on the GPS receiver, the fix was instantaneous after the reset just as before. So the problem may be that the GPS chipset itself needs to be reset, but which apparently the normal reset doesn't perform.
Thanks for the info, that's very useful! Glad to have been of some use, but it doesn't solve your, or my problem unfortunately. There doesn't seem to be any way of redoing the update of the GPS chipset firmware or downgrading, since the files aren't available as separate.exe files like the main firmware updates are, but only via webupdater. There was a funny thing that happened with the 2.50 firmware that when you did the GPS chipset update it hung on the update screen and needed a manual reboot to get it out of it.
They fixed this with the 2.60 main firmware update. To quote the release notes 'Fix reboot issue of GPS firmware update.'
Whether that had anything to do with it, I don't know. Glad to have been of some use, but it doesn't solve your, or my problem unfortunately. There doesn't seem to be any way of redoing the update of the GPS chipset firmware or downgrading, since the files aren't available as separate.exe files like the main firmware updates are, but only via webupdater. There was a funny thing that happened with the 2.50 firmware that when you did the GPS chipset update it hung on the update screen and needed a manual reboot to get it out of it. They fixed this with the 2.60 main firmware update. To quote the release notes 'Fix reboot issue of GPS firmware update.'
Whether that had anything to do with it, I don't know. Yes, it's unfortunate that it's impossible to downgrade the chipset firmware.
But finding more cases increases the chance, that Garmin will do something about this quickly. For example they could rename the 2.50 chipset firmware to 2.70 and allow us to 'upgrade' to it in WebUpdater. Or just create an exe with the old chipset fw for the affected people. Have you contacted their support yet?
I think it may speed things up if more people would complain about this bug. I have a Vista HCX since one month (First GPS) and I have the same problem. I thought I did something wrong until I read this post. This weekend, when I looked at the screen and saw the track was being logged around 100m from where I was I powered it off and on and immediately the track restarted where I really was. There is a gap of 100 in the middle of my track.
The operation took 15 seconds so I don't think anything changed in the reception conditions. I don't know why it happened but the track logging was OK for around 2 hours.
I have also seen that the track diverged progressively and not in one sudden move of 100m.This was a street and so easy to detect precisely on the map). It took around 100m to get 100m off, almost like a diagonal in a square. It stayed off constantly by 100m until I switched it off.
The rest of the day was OK with no more divergence. I have WAAS always turned off, as I've never seen any improvement with it on the HCx. Maybe the act of turning it off flipped something in the chipset firmware.
I'll try turning it on and then off to see if that helps. Thanks for the info. BTW, I got this reply for my latest query to product support: 'There is no known fault with the firmware and no way of downgrading, so the only option is a repair.' At least they are trying to be helpful.
But still, replacing a unit because of a buggy software update is a rather stupid thing to do IMHO. Especially since this seems to affect quite a number of people (I've got reports of this on a Hungarian forum as well).