Activity Profiles Go Missing

Hi! I have exactly the same problem! Post here months ago! With no answer/help! The declared function doesn´t work since releasing the watch. I wrote this now to Garmin - Chris and hope he will finally hel us!

Hi Chris,

pleeeeeease help me finaly with restoring watch from backup. I got 4th F7Pro, finally without HW problem, but I can´t use it. If I restore the watch from backup - no matter if the backup was from previous F7Pro or F7 or beta FW or stable FW to beta FW or stable FW, everything seems OK till connecting watch to ANY! PC (even without GE installed) or soft reseting the watch. After connecting to PC or soft reset, the watch lost all my sport profiles (activity apps) and it can´t be added in watch - the´re missing completely. But I can see corresponding files in GARMIN/Sports folder. So the profiles are not lost from watch, but the watch doesn´t show them IMHO. Each next soft reset or connect to PC seems to change something - other sport profiles get lost or another appear, same in add sport profile section. It is unpredictable. But 100% reproducible. So I can´t use the watch. I don´t want send it back for repair, I´ll send You all required files if You want, but I want working watch :-(. I tried many things, uninstall/install CIQ addons after restoring, manual copy of sport profile from F7 (that worked till connecting to PC or reset) etc.

I´ll try restoring on my F7, but I´m affraid, if I it gets broked like on F7Pro, I´ll be completely without watch. So please let me know, what should I do, before I return the watch again. Thank You!

forums.garmin.com/.../14-67-can-t-restore-backup-from-f7-to-f7pro

Apology to the OP, I am responding here to the restore problem described by Honza_81. But my conclusion is the same for both questions, and only a full reset to factory defaults with erasing everything, is likely to help. And @MacGyver: best to report this to Support in your area, this should not happen.

---- Warning: wild guesses based on vague hunches only! ----

The backup file on the watch is pretty small and seems to contain settings, watch capabilities and tables.

The backup is not simply "copy all the files, restore them and you are done".

Files such as sports profiles are probably restored from the system ROM, or maybe from Connect servers, and the restore process applies saved configuration and settings from backup. Apart from that, the usual process of syncing with Connect will restore values that are more recent than the backup (for example steps totals or VO2Max).

That seems to work fine in your case.

If the watch software is shut down (USB connection does that), the watch saves its internal state at that moment. Removing it from USB restores that state and also applies changes if new files have been put on storage (for example updates from Garmin Express).9

And that is where it apparently goes wrong: the state is not restored to what it was. Edit: It does not even need a restored backup to fail it seems.

I can imagine many ways any part of these processes could fail, but it is way to much for 1 lunch break to describe and does not help anyone.

So my thinking is that if restored backups result in states that can not be properly persisted, it is not worth trying to work with these backups anymore.

BTW Files on the watch do not represent the internal state. That is likely a database that we can not access. Files can be read and written by the software, but there is much more to it than the files you can see.

And as to Garmins credit, I am amazed at how this software has evolved over the years and how robust the core functionality is. I have not had crashes resulting in loss of activity data for some 10 years. Not saying there are no bugs! In systems this complex, you can't cover every possible use case and that is probably why they have the beta program.

I think you BOTH found pretty nasty bugs and I hope Garmin will address this adequately.

Do You use any CIQ add-ons? If yes, then which? Just for interest if we have something set up the same.

Data said:

I would reset my watch back to defaults and apply all my configuration manually.

That's exactly what I'm doing now, But I won't! If you were true, then why Garmin released this function? It was one of the reasons, why I bought F7Pro, that it will be easy and quick to set up. And it isn't.

And OK, I'm glad for lot of new features coming from Garmin. This is very good.

I have the exact same problem, after a reboot all my activity profiles that I have setup are gone, and I can't add them, even 'running' is gone. Please fix this asap, the only way to restore it is by resetting the watch and restoring a backup. Garmin-Christopher

For me, resetting the watch does nothing. after 1 day the same thing disappears again. I reported it to Garmin and I'm waiting for a response 

I believe, they will fix it soon. I was writing with Chris till night on Friday and the engineering team was finally able to replicate this issue. I'm glad for that, because for me it's unbelievable, that I was the only one who had this issue since buying the watch months ago. Even if I post it here, no one react with same problem.

So for now, we have to wait. I also set up the watch from scratch and made backup after that. But the engineering team want some files from me, so I sacrificed myself for you gentlemen :-)  and restored the problematic backup from previous watch again. I was resigned to spending Saturday resetting the watch from scratch again... But the last backup from same watch, which was made after clean set-up, was restored without problem and the watch survive reboot and connecting to PC.

I'm on the same Garmin journey as you. I also sent a lot of files. Unfortunately, in my case the problem keeps recurring, and the battery in my watch dies after 7-8 days of inactivity. I am currently waiting for a decision on what to do next. I'm starting to worry that I won't be able to start training with such expensive equipment :). nevertheless, as I have been a Garmin user for many years, I can confirm that their support works really great. I hope it will become clear soon what will happen next.