Related

Interesting theory by DC Rainmaker

DragonChowhound
2 months ago

Interesting write-up by DC Rainmaker, with his thoughts on the root cause:  www.dcrainmaker.com/.../garmin-watches-are-crashing-when-trying-to-start-gps.html

  • 0 2 months ago in reply to pdurys

    Nope. Nothing to do with the Chinese New Year.. Just faulty EPO/EPE data making the watches to crash.

  • 0 2 months ago

    and yet I could run without issues. My guess this is somehow related to the latest software version. I decided a while back that updating my watch is pointless and I've been happy ever after. Nothing good comes up with a Garmin update and you're better off keeping a software version that works than installing one full of bugs.

  • 0 2 months ago in reply to 4955375

    Whether you encountered the problem or not was random in the sense that the watch downloads new EPO/EPE data only periodically when the old data expires. If your current file was downloaded just before the corrupted one replaced it, it's likely that your watch had no reason to update its EPO/EPE during the time the problem occurred.

    Firmware version doesn't have much to do with the problem, since the EPO/EPE data is GPS chipset dependent, not firmware.

  • 0 2 months ago in reply to Bitti

    Be that as it may, good software should not allow an entire device to get crippled when a file related to a limited function gets corrupted. I still believe Garmin software team is utterly incompetent, based not only on this but on countless issues flagged in these forums and elsewhere. Not to mention bugs announced in beta versions of firmware that are still released as production software, causing a lot of headaches. This is my last Garmin device and I know I'm not alone.

  • 0 2 months ago in reply to 4955375

    I definitely agree that there are at least three things that together made the fiasco possible:

    • Creation of a corrupted GNSS ephemeris data file (this may not have been Garmin's fault)
    • Not checking the consistency of the file (before uploading to Garmin servers, and/or by the watch when downloading the data)
    • When corrupted ephemeris caused the GNSS chip to fail (my guess at what might have caused the crash), the watch definitely shouldn't have tried to use the same corrupted ephemeris data after rebooting.

    But since this incident will probably trigger Garmin to finally add more checking into the firmware, that's an incentive in the future to upgrade your the firmware. Wink

  • 0 2 months ago in reply to Bitti

    that would be the ideal case. I root for this, but I wouldn't hold my breath.