Constant Reboots and Data Loss (Since January 2025)

Hi everyone,

Is anyone else facing this issue?

Since January 2025, my Garmin Forerunner 255 has been randomly rebooting during activities, showing a blue triangle before restarting. Every time this happens, I lose the last 5 minutes of my activity data, and it can occur multiple times during a single run making the watch useless.

Even when idle, the watch occasionally restarts on its own, though that’s less disruptive.

I contacted Garmin support, but they told me I’d need to pay nearly €150 to replace the watch. I find this unacceptable. I purchased it in 2023, already had it replaced once last year due to a hardware problem, and now—less than a year later—it’s been malfunctioning for almost 7 months. Asking me to spend more money for a functional watch again feels outrageous.

For a product at this price point, I think it’s fair to expect a lifespan far longer than a year.

Has anyone found a real fix for this issue? I’ve tried every possible method I could find online (factory resets, syncing, letting GPS fully acquire for 15 minutes before syncing, checking for corrupted files, etc.) but nothing has solved it.

Garmin support has now stopped responding to me, so I’m stuck with a watch that feels unusable.
Any advice or proven solutions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

0 RunTammyJ 2 months ago

My Fenix 7S Pro has been doing something similar, randomly rebooting during a programmed workout, and while my data to that point has been automatically saved, my programmed workout disappears from my watch so that I can't follow the prompts. I spent half an hour on a chat with Garmin today and was told replacing my watch wouldn't help as it seemed to be a software problem. Then they gave me a long procedure to follow AFTER THE NEXT TIME IT CRASHES. So, their answer was to keep using the watch, wait for it to fail AGAIN in the middle of my training, and then do this long, complicated checklist followed by doing a factory reset of the watch. Sorry that I don't have any advice. I just wanted to commiserate.

0 jukan 10 days ago

I've had the same issue multiple times this year. I completely agree that this is unacceptable for a product that is this expensive and relatively new (I'm still using my watch that I bought in May 2023). I got a similar answer from Garmin Support (pay ~150 CAD for a replacement) so I have stopped recommending Garmin products to friends because of the lack of good support options from Garmin here and my next watch will not be a Garmin.

I've found the following settings have completely mitigated the problem so that I can continue using the watch until my replacement arrives:

- changing the "Satellite" mode to "GPS only"

- disabling vibration from the "Sound & Vibe" menu

For my device, it seems like it often crashes whenever some sort of alert is triggered during an activity (eg. a lap, pacing signal, etc.) or when the GPS signal is week (there are certain spots where I run where my watch seems to reliably crash). Changing these setting has made the watch stable enough to run for days without crashing.

I miss the vibration feedback because I find that I don't always hear the audio signals when I'm in a loud environment or wearing clothes that cover my wrist but this is a trade-off I'm willing to make right now.

0 ec.con 10 days ago in reply to jukan

Mine didn’t respond to any of those changes, Garmin recognized it as a warranty defect and offered a replacement (refurbished same model), and very kindly waived the replacement fee even though it was past warranty. Great company! I then shut off auto updates so I’m on an older version of the OS.

0 6125703 9 days ago in reply to jukan

What kind of battery life are you getting in general? How long has the watch been in service?

Both of those changes sound like ways to reduce the peak power consumption of the watch. That could mean the battery is nearing the end of its service life, so when the watch tries to use some of the power-hungry functions, the voltage drops and it malfunctions or shuts down...

0 jukan 8 days ago in reply to 6125703

I still get a about full week of battery life but I'm not measuring it very closely. I've been using the watch since May 2023 when I bought it used but the watch was relatively new at that time so it should not have been too degraded when I bought it.

I'd say that I was consistently getting over a week of battery life the whole time and there hasn't been a noticeable reduction throughout the time I've used it. I used to have the continuous pulse oximeter measurements enabled which is noted to reduce the battery life so I though 8-10 days per charge was reasonable given that advertised battery life is 14 days. I agree that the battery in my watch is probably getting worn out but I don't think that's the only problem here.

About 5 months ago, I had the same problem where the watch was constantly crashing and getting stuck on the blue triangle screen (and I have forum comments and partial activities that were cut off to show for it). At the time, I believed this started after a recent system update and I couldn't find a way to rollback since I didn't update using GarminExpress. I was also in the beta program at the time so I figured it could just be bad beta software. I've since left the beta program because I felt this issue was unacceptable considering that I couldn't get any support on the beta forum for the problem.

After a few weeks of trying and failing, I basically gave up on the watch and assumed that it was never going to work again until a friend suggested that the problem could be because of using too much power. This gave me the idea to specifically disable settings that used extra power so I disabled continuous pulse oximeter and switched from the auto satellite selection to the GPS only setting and gave the watch another try. This allowed me to keep using the watch normally and it seemed to return to normal system stability and battery life. After a could non-beta system updates, I reset the system settings I had changed back to the more power-hungry versions I was was previously using and the system remained stable.

Then in November, I started getting very similar stability issues again. This time around, it's not clear if this was from a recent system update but it seems like I need to disable these settings for a bit and wait until a future update hopefully fixes things again.

0 6125703 8 days ago in reply to jukan

If you're in northern hemisphere, November could just be the season change and the battery struggling in the cold?