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VA3 very, very slow to acquire satellites

This bug appeared last week and has persisted.

Every time I start a new outdoor activity, the watch takes minutes (upwards of 5 minutes) rather than seconds to acquire a GPS signal. I have not changed geographic locations. I sync the watch with my phone before the run to make sure it has an updated time. I have a clear, unobstructed view of the sky.

What are my options for fixing this issue?

0 mTag over 6 years ago

I haven't noticed a loss of settings. I did lose about a weeks worth of activities from the history on the watch, but those were already synced with Connect so there was no real loss there.

0 mTag over 6 years ago

It's been 6 days since I deleted the Activity, NewFiles, Monitor, and Settings folders to solve the problem of slow GPS acquisition.

This morning, my watch took about 3 minutes to connect to satellites. I don't know what's going on, but this doesn't appear to be a one-time issue.

I would appreciate if others who are experiencing this bug to report their experiences and possible solutions.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

What version of Garmin Express are you using? The last version was installing a bad EPO file on watches causing the GPS problem. If this is the cause of your problem, the latest version of Express has fixed it.

0 mTag over 6 years ago

Thanks for the help. I just upgraded Express to the most up-to-date version this morning. Hopefully that will solve the issue. Do you mind me asking where you got that info? I'd like to keep track of it myself.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

mTag It was an issue that affected my 935 as well as the 645. I don't recall which forum it was in, but a Garmin rep posted about the problem and the fix a couple of days ago. Both my 935 and the wife's VA3 are working fine now.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

mTag 935 forum, thread "Slow GPS fix and expired EPO in FW 10.10" post #45 and #52.

0 Mahn over 6 years ago

Can confirm that I'm also seeing 2-3 minutes to acquire GPS on a new VA3. Hopefully they can fix the EPO file issue on the Garmin Connect mobile app as well.

0 Alizar1n over 6 years ago

mTag It was an issue that affected my 935 as well as the 645. I don't recall which forum it was in, but a Garmin rep posted about the problem and the fix a couple of days ago. Both my 935 and the wife's VA3 are working fine now.

Yap solved the gps slow lock by using epo.bin copied to unit