Garmin gremlins

Image by clumsy_juggler via Flickr

The mischievous little creature kind of Gremlin,
not the car kind of Gremlin.

It seems that the gremlins have been busy around our house this past month. We've had plumbing issues, a broken cabinet door, a broken garage door, and now my Garmin 305 is acting up as well. My Garmin is one of my most, if not the most, favorite pieces of running gear. So I've been very anxious to get it working again.

My Garmin problems started a few days ago, when I couldn't get it to turn on as I was heading out for a run. This has actually happened once before, so I knew to do a soft reset (hold lap + mode, then press power and all three for a few seconds), and like last time, it came back to life. Then after my run, my Garmin decided that it was no longer on speaking terms with my computer, and refused to upload any data. Plus, I haven't been able to start up my Garmin without doing a soft reset.

So over the past few days, I've done some google research and tried a variety of things to resolve my Garmin issues. I've cleaned the contacts, updated drivers, cleared some of the history, cleared all of the history, etc. Clearing the history helped some. After clearing the history, I was able to upload some data. The time and distance info would show up, but not any of the map data, and also the pace/elevation charts don't appear either.

As a last resort, I did a hard reset, which wipes everything and sets it back to factory settings. I found conflicting information about how exactly to do a factory reset, but this is what actually worked:

1. If the unit is on, do a soft reset (hold lap + mode) to force the unit to power off.
2. Hold down Enter + Mode for a couple of seconds, then quickly press and release the power button while continuing to hold the Enter and Mode buttons for a few more seconds.
3. After releasing the Enter and Mode buttons, your Garmin should power up and go through the start-up screens as if it's a new device.

This procedure really does wipe everything, so be prepared to lose data and settings if you do this. I had already either uploaded or manually entered all of my runs, so I wasn't concerned about losing history. I also wrote down the fields I had set up on each of my screens, so tonight I'll need to set those up again.

I'll find out after tonight's workout if this fixed the problem. However, I was able to start my Garmin without a soft reset, so that's a good sign.

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Update:

Since doing the factory reset on my Garmin, I've taken it out for two runs and I'm happy to report that all of the problems have gone away! The factory reset seems to have fixed everything.




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