I have been using my new Vivoactive 3 music without much trouble for about a month now but on today’s run just after the fireworks graphic appeared indicating that i had reached the daily steps threshold, my music stopped playing, and whenever I tried to start it again I received a “media error occurred” message. The device was then extremely slow and did not return to its usual tracking display. I wouldn’t otherwise mind this but I appear to have lost the activity due to this error which is quite frustrating for a new device. After a restart the watch appears to be functioning normally again but I worry that this may happen on a subsequent run.
I've just had something similar happen to me on my VA3M. I was around 18km into a half marathon and received the "media error occurred" message whilst I was switching to a new podcast. The device then became really slow and it reverted to a default watch face rather than my usual one. I managed to get the screen back to tracking the run, and it continued to count up the distance. At the end of my run, it hadn't recorded any activity details and the date was the 31st December. The watch seems to have recorded the daily steps, intensity minutes, floors climbed, heart rate etc. just not the activity itself.
I've just experienced the same thing while I was running and listening to music on spotify. When the badge appeared that I reached my daily steps amount the music started to be distorted like the headphones were losing the connection. Then when I tried to restart the music I saw there are no music on the watch. i tried to reboot but when I turned off I couldn't turn on after. I could only restart by pressing the button and connecting to power source. Then the watch face got reset to the default. It is very disturbing because I can't use my watch the only thing I bought for.
Same thing happened to me and I've only had the watch a week! Garmin, is anyone out there listening??? I was listening to Spotify, running with the GPS, and got a goal alert. Watch froze for a minute or two and then I got the "Media Error Occurred". Any help would be appreciated!
I had the same issue. I resolved this by first uninstalling the Spotify app from the watch I then downloaded the 'Garmin Express' application on to my computer, connected the watch and let it sync and perform a system/firmware update to my watch, which I think was 4.90. Let it restarted, reinstalled Spotify and no more errors...for me.
Well, that was short lived. For my issue, I've narrowed it down to the music player causing my watch to keep crashing and rebooting after I get the error.
I haven’t had any problems lately. I’m not sure if this fixed it but I turned off all notifications on the watch since it seemed like this would happen in relation to a mile alert, steps goal notification, or any of the other notifications Garmin felt necessary. Give that a try.
I just had this error happen on my watch. I turned it off and now it won't restart. I've made sure its plugged in and recharged. Any advice much appreciated.
. Thank you so much. 
