Two watches (F5 and F5s) frozen screens at same time

Just to share mine and my girlfriend's "experience" today. We were on a 9th kilometer of 14 kilometer hike. We were both recording the activity as hike, using different data screens each of us had setup before. Both of us were using "navigation" based on previous activity we recorded a week ago (I was using my recording and she was using hers). so, suddenly her watch stopped responding - no reaction on button presses etc. I checked my watch and it was just slow when scrolling between data screens. 2 minutes later I had exact same problem. I was still getting "1 km distance alerts", but, nothing would change on the screen. When we finished the hike, we tried to soft-restart our watches, but they would just get stuck on Garmin logo. We had to do the hard reset at home, wiping our settings and killing the activity. So, activity lost, settings lost, another 30 min spent on re-configuring, re-pairing etc.
Wondering, what on earth can cause two watches freeze like that, never happened to us before!

  • I have similar experience with "Virtual partner" on my F5s. I tried 2 times to use this function (race against previous activity) - in both cases the watch get stuck just like yours - screen frozen, buttons not responding, only the 1km laps were still vibrating. Luckily, after turning the watch off and on, the activity was there (just without the HR in the first case).
    12.8.2017 - FW 5.10 - stucked after 15km of 30
    24.1.2018 - FW 7.60 - stucked after 5km of 15

    So I rather do not use this function.
  • I had a similar problem last week and have had before, with a 5.. I was XC-skiing a previous activity in reverse. the whole previous activity was probably about 3 hours. The re-run, navigating the previous track, locked up at about 5 km (actually on the lap notification screen) and like you nothing worked except a hard reset. (I didn't try just continuing to see if it would still lap like Hustey-72 suggests above.) This was the first time for me.

    On the other hand, I repeatedly followed a several hundred km course (St Cuthbert's Way and Hadrians Wall) last summer over several days. I think I read somewhere that activities contain a huge lot more points than a course. Anyway, I have concluded that following an activity is likely to overload the watch and that I should save it as a course if I know in advance I want to do that.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    I had the same problem this morning. Lost the activity and lost all data on watch.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    Grim bug this- raced a previously recorded course, 12.5k - and it caused a soft reset once, and the second time a hard reset. Be good to hear from Garmin when they're going to address this.

  • Two times during ski touring activity Same problem in a dangerous place !!!
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    I experienced a similar problem during a climbing. I climbed for almost 10 hours tracking the whole route and when I reached the summit, I have ended the activity tracking, then I wanted to navigate the route back to my camp and the screen frozen. Soft reset did not solve the problem so I had to made a hard reset. Al tracking points were lost.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    The same probleme here. Watch crash 2 time during last 2 week. First time during use previous route, and second time using virtual partner.
    Iam very disappointed because of this problem.
    It is software or hardware problem?
    Is solution replace the watch from Garmin?