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Garmin Forerunner 255 – GPS Issues

DoDo

Hi everyone,

I’ve been having trouble with my Forerunner 255’s GPS for the past week. It suddenly stopped finding satellites when starting outdoor activities like running or walking. Until then, it worked perfectly.

I tried restarting the watch, syncing with Garmin Express and Garmin Connect to refresh satellite data. Oddly enough, it worked yesterday and I completed a run. But later in the day, it failed again.

During today’s workout the signal even dropped mid‑activity and hasn’t come back since. Sob

Now, it just keeps searching without locking onto GPS – even after 30 minutes under clear sky. It’s very unreliable and I can’t figure out any pattern. I’ve tried everything except a factory reset.

Anyone else had similar issues? I'm on software version 23.20. Would really appreciate any suggestions!

  • 0

    Anybody figured out how to downgrade the firmware? Just want basic functionality to work…

    This is getting awfully ridiculous. Randomly losing GPS, lock taking forever, GPS drifting off > 30m on certain parts - this all in mostly open fields with trees and some low buildings.

    My old Apple Watch Series 3 had a whole bunch of quirks, at least core functionality such as GPS worked! 

  • 0 in reply to 7870891

    It's easy to downgrade if you have an older firmware file. But Garmin won't supply it.

  • 0 in reply to Jacquers

    Thanks! I always updated via my phone, I'll have a look if I can find the firmware file(s) somewhere. 

  • 0

    One thing I noticed, all the GPS settings on my watch had changed. No idea if this happened when a software update was downloaded to the watch or something like that, but it certainly changed and it wasn't by me.

    Satelites

    - make sure it is set to "All + Multi band (Best Accuracy)"

    Data recording

    - Frequency: Every Second 

    Since I changed both these settings, the watch is performing much better.

  • 0

    I take back my comment that GPS was working well again. Today's run I had quick GPS lock when I started run. After 15km went under bridge (maybe 15m) and it lost GPS, taking few minutes to recover. I've run under the bridge many times before and never had an issue.

    Got home from run and looked at map and saw that it just stopped 2km from the end! The distance measured is correct, but the last 2km of the trace is just missing!

  • 0 in reply to mbailey33

    I don't mean to rub it in, but I just did a short trip in Yosemite NP where I had about 15 hours of pretty much flawless tracking with the Auto Select mode on my FR255. This includes an area where I walked in a small circular search pattern in a narrow canyon in the shadow of a 4k' cliff face (Half Dome), and my recorded track seems very accurate to me.

    There are a few little gaps in my 11 mile track that day, but I think those correspond to where I used the pause and/or "resume later" features.

    Edit: I keep wondering what would lead to such different experiences. Does it depend on the geographic region, something about the watch's lifetime of usage, or maybe there are different hardware revisions all called FR255 so they either don't take exactly the same software or don't behave the same even with the same software?