Forerunner 965 reboots itself at random

Yes. I have it quite often with track mode. I reported the bug to garmin more than a month ago. Last week I asked for a status update, but garmin support couldn’t bother to answer.

Garmin is aware of the crashes but seems to be incapable doing something about it. Or couldn’t care less and are busy implementing features because marketing demands that to sell more watches.

For me since 4.19 my frequent reboots have been fixed, I only had a single one when asked to accept a new threshold after a run. I also did some track running in track mode, and so far nothing bad happened to me there.

There is the possibility to file a bug report in the beta forum, where you can upload the watches crash dump files. Ideal (but often not possible) would be some steps that can trigger the crash. You could try and run a more minimalistic setup to see if the crashes continue, stripping away any "dangerous" things such as connectIQ datafields or any other custom running software that might bring additional bugs with it.

I don’t run beta versions and I refuse to do beta testing for garmin for free.

At the time of the crashes I didn’t had any connectIQ datafields. I try to avoid them as much as possible. Now I have only 1, for my stryd, and I just avoid trackmode. It doesn’t work anyway. (But you have to do some calibration laps first and don’t do the warmingup outside the track, from what I understand. Well, that”s definitely not how training on a track at an athletics club work. I shouldn’t have to adjust my training for my watch. My watch should there be for me)

And like I said, I reported the crashes and inquired for a followup. At first garmin said the filed the bug on my second report they didn’t answer at all.

Hi Elbo,

I was trying to give feedback to the original poster, not your response, sorry if that was not clear.

To address your point about track mode and calibration: Track mode requires 2-3 laps of a track to "learn its shape" before it can fully activate - but this information is stored in the watch for each track - so if you are at a new track for the very first time and want track mode to be fully enabled from the start, the recommendation is to run 2-3 laps in a separate activity, save, then start a new one and do your normal workout. If you have done a previous track mode session on this track, there is no need for this, full track mode will be available from the start.

If you don't care about the perfect plot for the first 2-3 laps, you can also just start running normally on a "new" track, the watch will enable track mode after a those 2-3 loops during the activity as well, so it is only the start that will have a bit wobbly plot.

Warm-up outside of the track should be no problem, if you go a few meters off the track the watch will recognize that and stop snapping your position to the track. If your warm-up is outside the track but very close to the track you might get some weird effects while the watch tries to figure out if it should be snapping your position to the track (track mode enabled), or if it should not.

My FR965 crashes in different ways - sometimes it's during an activity (thankfully it stopped creating multisport activities out of a trail run causing loss of valuable data like run/walk ratio and others) and sometimes it's when I try to configure an activity from my phone via Garmin Connect. The latter caused three consecutive reboots!

Fredderic said:

If you have done a previous track mode session on this track, there is no need for this, full track mode will be available from the start.

I run at the same track every week. I know the lengths of the intervals I run, but the length my watch reports in trackmode is just as off as with gps in non trackmode (and just as of as with my previous forerunner 935).

Now I use a stryd for pace and distance and don't use trackmode anymore and get better stats.

Not that is is very important. I know the distances of my intervals and I know the times I have to hit. All other info isn't  really needed. (so even if trackmode would work, it's only for round figures on interval distances on strava, and not helping my training in any way) 

Track mode for garmin watches is mostly about the shape of the plot, when it is enabled it is perfectly round (oval?), when not it is a bit wobbly. Also the distance and pace metrics might be a bit better, but on a track you should ideally be using the manual lap button at the track marking points, e.g. if you run 400m press lap button when you cross the start/finish line, then you only need to look at the time, and you don't care at all about garmins interpretation of pace and distance, since you know its 400m.

I know how to run intervals on a track.

But trackmode is only for the map to look nice? So it is even less useful than I originally thought. To bad garmin spends their time on not usefull features, while there are so many bugs still to fix. 

Hi Georgi, from the symptom of crashes in different ways, do you have third party watch face, apps or data field installed?  Try to remove them and observe if any more crash?  Then install one after another to test ,  So far mine is working flawlessly. 

Nope, I'm using a stock watchface. The only third-party thing I have on my watch is the Stryd data field which I absolutely need.