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Can't Acquire GPS Fix last few days

Mike
5 months ago

Since Monday my 255 Music is unable to aquire a GPS fix, despite being in the latest software version and in a clear view of the sky for more than 30 minutes.

Last Sunday everything worked as normal, with a fix being acquired within seconds. But now it seems impossible.

Anybody else with this issue?

  • 0 1 month ago

    Same here since weeks

    GPS lock now takes now up to 15–20 minutes (working time to time as expexted) and gps signal if often lost during run in open area, never occurred previously. I’ve tried everything factory reset, removing remoteSw files,.... but without improvements.

    Looks more a sw issue than a hardware one, but can't find any rationale. 

  • 0 1 month ago

    Same here since weeks

    GPS lock now takes now up to 15–20 minutes (working time to time as expexted) and gps signal if often lost during run in open area, never occurred previously. I’ve tried everything factory reset, removing remoteSw files,.... but without improvements.

    Looks more a sw issue than a hardware one, but I can't find any rationale. 

  • 0 1 month ago

    Each of my runs since 10 June had issues, either with obtaining a GPS lock or losing it during the run, typically varrying in duration from 5 to 30 minutes (basically ruining the run tracking or worse messing up navigation in races). Loses GPS lock in open fields too.

    Tried different GPS and a reset, but doesn't make a difference. The linked document doesn't help either. Also, never had any issues with this in the 1.5 year before. Given the other reports, I suspect a software issue.

  • 0 19 days ago

    Same situation here. 

    Forerunner 255 suddenly stopped locking onto GPS about a week ago. It had always worked fine before.

    I tried restarting, syncing with Garmin Express and Connect, and even left it under open sky for 30 mins—no luck. Oddly, it worked once yesterday, but failed again later the same day.

    Today the GPS dropped mid-activity. Confused So annoying.

    Running firmware 23.20.

  • 0 19 days ago

    Same of @DoDo , Forerunner 255 suddenly stopped locking onto GPS about a week ago. It had always worked fine before.

    Now after factory reset seem locking GPS better than before but not suddenly like one week ago.

    Crazy!!!

    The watch have 2 years and 2 months

  • 0 19 days ago

    Hi all, I've been trying to methodically debug this issue with the tools I have at hand. I'll share my whole train of thought and tests in case this might help somebody else. If this doesn't help you or you try something let us know!

    TL;DR: Check if the compass is working correctly, and if not calibrate it and wait a minute before trying to get a fix. Apparently it helped in my case.

    First of all, some things I'd like to clarify:
    1. Thankfully I'm not anywhere near a place where GPS jamming is a concern.
    2. For me, this issue started without updating the software version, so I don't think it's a bug shipped with a software update.

    I've found that a simple hard reset didn't do the trick. I had to:
    1. Unpair the watch from my phone
    2. Uninstall Garmin Connect from my phone
    3. Hard reset the watch using the key combo
    4. Reinstall Connect, pair and restore the backup in my watch.

    After that, the first sync took a while. And after that first sync was completed, I had to wait about 30 min before trying to get GPS fix. If I had done those steps in that order, I'd get a fix within 5 minutes and be able to do an activity without issue.

    However, that's only work for a day. When I tried to get a fix the following day, the GPS signal indicator wouldn't budge. So for a few days I was hard resetting my watch every single day, which is very annoying, specially since both my watch and the app wanted me to complete the walkthrough every time, with notifications on the watch and popups on the app.

    After a few days of this I thought maybe it was that syncing the watch with my phone was somehow corrupting something. So I disabled BT connectivity, and I'd sync via WiFi. But that didn't help.

    Another theory I tested was that maybe there's something wrong the Ephemeris file, either when downloading it or when the phone sends it to the watch (Since if this was an issue with the remote file itself, everybody would be affected). 
    So I tried to clean the Ephemeris file and sync it with Garmin Express, or downloading it and uploading it to the RemoteSW folder of the watch. But this didn't help either.

    Finally, one day while waiting in vain to get a GPS fix, I noticed that the compass was messed up. It was pointing north no matter where I faced. So I just calibrated it, and to my surprise, within a few more minutes I had a fix.

    Now, every day before trying to get a fix, I just check the compass. So far (about a week), it's been working fine. I get the fix within a couple of minutes. I don't know if I was just lucky and this is a coincidence, or if this was the root cause of the issue.

    I have been getting this issue on and off for about 4 months, so I don't know if I'm just in another lucky period of "off", and I don't think I have any way to double check. But I'm sharing this here in the hopes that it helps other people and we can confirm that this is the reason behind this annoying issue.