Garmin device taking ages to connect within Basecamp

Did you put a whole bunch of GPX files onto your device? Or maybe you just collected a lot of data on your vacation?

Consider removing some of the gpx data on your device (and archive it in BaseCamp or elsewhere). The device data will be read out a lot faster if you reduce the amount of data that will have to be read in.

Do you have any Birdseye files on your Oregon?

Just to add a datapoint. With my Montana 600 it takes about 6 minutes from the time I see the device show up under Devices until the data list is populated. This is with the Montana already in storage mode and launching Basecamp.

The device has only 203 items; 203 waypoints Nothing else.
The GPX directory contains 4 files for about 17Mb data.

6 minutes for 17 Mb of data does seem pretty slow.

The problem seems to increase exponentially.

30 waypoints = 7 seconds
55 waypoints = 24 seconds
95 waypoints = 54 seconds
203 waypoints = 5 min 45 seconds

The Montana is on version 3.80 backed doen from 3.96 Beta.
Basecamp is 3.3.2

I can copy a 12Mb pdf file from the PC to the Montana using Explorer in about 3 seconds.

Do you also have the complete maps for the same version as your GPS installed on your PC? My CN NA 2012.4 maps are 1.6GB on my GPS that may need to be completely read into BC if they are not installed on your PC.

A file copy of the 2012.40 maps (1.6GB) from my Zumo 665 says it will take 7.5 minutes to copy. From my Zumo 550 (usb 1.x) it says 40 minutes.

Not sure about the original poster but I have the same maps loaded in the device and active on the PC - CN NA 2012.4.
In any case the problem for me is that there is a threshold that I've yet to find that drastically increases the time. A couple hundred waypoints is definately a problem.

The same basic set of waypoints/routes/tracks loads from my old GPSMap 60 into mapsource in a matter of a few seconds.

I have just under 7MB of GPX data on it, which is 652 waypoints.
The maps are all installed in the PC (which takes a long time when originally doing it, but once done it doesn't do it again)
I don't have any birdseye data on the device.

I just deleted it all, in Basecamp, then when running again it connected in a couple of seconds.

I then put the data back in again (sending from my basecamp version of the waypoints, in the list), which took about 10 seconds to copy.

And now when connecting it again takes about 10 minutes before data can be displayed.
It obviously doesn't take this long to read the data from the device, as it can read/write this much data in a few seconds, so why does it take so long to process it?
And why did it used to be so quick? I've only added a few waypoints (about 10 or so) recently.

It's using 100% of a CPU while doing this processing.

Also when adding a lot (e.g. 500) geocaches previously it didn't make it any slower to connect.

I wish I could be sure but I think something must have happened with BC 3.3.2.
I was traveling a few weeks ago with a laptop that had a 3.2x beta (I think) and I didn't have this problem. I updated the laptop to 3.3.2 when I got back but hadn't used it with the Montana. I just tried it this morning and have the same slow connect.

I wish I could be sure but I think something must have happened with BC 3.3.2.
I was traveling a few weeks ago with a laptop that had a 3.2x beta (I think) and I didn't have this problem. I updated the laptop to 3.3.2 when I got back but hadn't used it with the Montana. I just tried it this morning and have the same slow connect.

That's odd. I was using 3.1.3 when I first started getting this problem.

Aha... I've found the problem.. well mine, at least. Not sure if it affects others.

When I edited the gpx file in a text editor (PSPad in this case) I noticed that there were huge amounts of blank lines in some of the waypoints.

The blanks were in the notes (which seem to be duplicated in the <cmt> and <desc> fields) and most of the blanks are in between the start and end of the notes.

One of these waypoints had 260,000 blank lines in both the <cmt> and <desc> field - so over half a million blank lines for that one entry!

I've edited the blanks out, within Basecamp, for the 9 worst ones, and the gpx file size went down from 31 MB to 0.6 MB.
And basecamp now connects to the device in 4 seconds compared with the original 10 minutes.

I've looked back in some of my old exports of my waypoints which I've still kept and it looks like there are blanks going a long way back, although not so many. They seem to be growing over time.
This may be because I've been copying them around between different collections and the device - perhaps it doubles the blanks every time or something weird.

Let's hope the new version of Basecamp doesn't do this. I'll have to keep an eye on it.

An update to this... sometimes the blanks don't seem to stay away!

This was noticed when working with the collections (no device plugged in).
I removed one of the huge pile of blanks from one of the waypoints in Basecamp, but noticed, when exported, the waypoint still had blanks.

When I went back into Basecamp the blanks were indeed still there.

So I tried without an export. Just deleted the blanks. Quit the program, started it up, and the blanks were back!

So then I tried deleting the blanks and adding another line to the comment.
This time the blank stayed away.

This doesn't happen with all of the ones that I've deleted blanks from, just a few of them.

Looks like Basecamp is going a bit mental sometimes!