I bought a secondhand Forerunner 245 which I have factory reset. It offers to pair with my phone and Connect, the PIN is accepted and it connects via bluetooth, but Connect does not complete the setup successfully. Although I receive messages on the watch, and the phone is paired via Bluetooth, Connect does not have it 'registered' so I cannot update the watch's software from the ancient v4.40 that it's running.
I have also tried to connect via USB with Garmin Express on my laptop. This 'sees' the 245 but Express refuses to connect saying the 245 "is not compatible with Garmin Express". I have tried older versions of Garmin Express, all the way back to v5 and v4 - these fail too. I sometimes see an error that "the Garmin servers are unavailable".
So I cannot connect a factory reset Garmin to my iPhone with Connect (although it's connected successfully via Bluetooth) or my laptop with Express (although it shows as connected in the Finder).
Any ideas?
