ZUMO 350 Freezing

Having owned many Garmin products over the years for everything from boating to flying I have to say that the ZUMO 350LM is the biggest piece of excessively overpriced junk in their stable.

In addition to useless "apps" and a memory wasting, unintuitive interface... It now freezes every few miles necessitating pulling over to do a reset just to gain a few more miles of insight. Use of this unit never quite felt right or as fluid as every other model I've used. Navigation of it's interface is counter intuitive, clumsy, and aggravating.

Garmin received an email service request from me earlier so we'll have to see how they handle it. In the past any service I've required has been handled properly, but conspicuously missing was any mention of error or fault on the mfg/design side. This is also reflected in their FAQ's as a cross word cannot be found on their site. Positives only. Thus no help whatsoever.

Updates to follow.

How I wish I never sold my 450.

I don’t know whether you have the Garmin Express program already, if not, I recommend that you download it and use it to update your Zumo (ie with both the latest firmware & software)…please let us know how you get on?
Please refer Garmin Express website link below:
http://software.garmin.com/en-US/express.html

This is the first time I have heard of a 350 freezing. What does it look like when it happens? As a fellow 350 owner, I am curious. I have not experienced this problem yet but have had only a couple thousand miles on the unit.

Have you already run the updates from the MyDashboard page at Garmin? There could be both map and GPS unit software updates. Here: https://my.garmin.com/mygarmin/dashboard/dashboardScanDevice.htm?in=true&ni=ff

ETA: There is at least one thread here of people complaining about Garmin Express. I would use mapupdater instead.

Thanks Mick & Emoto-- Yes, the unit's firmware and maps are kept up to date via Garmin web updater and map update. I have about 12k on mine and other than the clumsy interface I've not had any issues until lately with the freezing.

I was unaware of Garmin Express so tried that and it showed everything is up to date. I will use this utility from now on as it does everything rather that using separate utils... Thanks again for that.

Garmin Express seems to work okay for me. The only thing it doesn't do is update the map set on the PC. Have to use the updater utility for that.

Still hadn't heard from Garmin so they received my call today. After an hour of trying diagnostics and suggestions they threw in the towel and are sending out a replacement. As usual, they were very courteous and thorough. I still don't care for this model, but I'll gladly take the replacement and get on with the season.

FYi, it froze twice in 250mi yesterday and 4 times today in 80mi. Go figure.

Glad they're doing the right thing. I look forward to a follow-up post to see if the new unit does the same thing or not.

I'll be certain to update with any progress. 40mi into a 350mi ride today found the unit frozen again. Upon resetting, it then went into screen calibration mode which has occurred to many others. Now, I like a rousing game of dots with a 3 year old kid as much as the next guy... But this took calibration to a completely new level. Thankfully I was stopping for breakfast as I must have hit 50 positional dots (curiosity) before the unit returned to normal use. It then went the balance of the ride with no freezing.

How odd that I've never experienced an aviation or marine GPS failure, yet this highly over-priced terrestrial unit with no perceivable technological advancement can fail with such ease and frequency.

This thing sure cultivates relationships with maps, odometers, and speedometers.

>End rant.


*Addendum:
Just received notice from Garmin informing me that they've shipped a refurbished replacement unit. With good reason I expected a new one, as I was led to believe. $700.00 doesn't buy too much from these folks any more. If this unit should have similar failings I'll wash my hands of the matter and refer it to both consumer and governmental consumer bureaus for their review. I pay for solutions, not problems... And certainly not someone elses'

>End rant?

I too have experienced freezing issues with my 350 that I purchased new from Touratech-USA here in Seattle. I could not go more than 15 miles at best without it freezing.

Freezing being that the screen would look like a screen shot of a particular point that I was traveling, but would not change.

Did the soft reset by holding the power button for 10 seconds or so and lately, ended up with the calibration screen where I would endlessly play "connect the dots".

I would go through several soft reset cycles and "connect the dots" calibration until I got is going again.

Just did a hard reset tonight, set things up again and chose a different view to see if that improves things. I will let you all know how if this helps things out.

Also, I use both web updater and express and both show that I am current and up to date.

I also thought changing the graphics might help, but it didn't.

Good luck.

My Zumo 350lm was purchased brand new, and I'm only using the map that comes with the unit (no secondary maps added on it).
And sometimes I can ride 300Km without issues, but for example this weekend it froze 3, 4 times in less than 200Km.
That's really annoying, especially considering I spent 700 USD on this unit here in Brazil. where I had an old (but working perfectly) Nuvi 550.

I contacted Garmin today by email to see if there is any solution for this, but what were the suggestions you got from them ?

Do you have any custom voice installed ?
I'm removing all the custom voices to see if it helps, will test it again this weekend.

Thanks,

I believe the fact that Garmin can only recommend a hard reset is somewhat telling in that there really is nothing a user can do about the problem.

As for the voices, I tried that too. This thing had me second guessing any changes I made from factory settings. It may not be what you want hear, but I'd return it if it's not too late.

Good luck.

I found the tutorial about this hard reset and did it. it seems to be resolved (for now).
But I have to agree that it seems to be temp solution, actually is not even a solution is just a workaround.

I have disable the tracklog to see if it helps.
I rode 400Km this weekend without issues, will see !

But I have to say I'm not comfortable with this...

Thanks,

Am curious about what was happening when a freeze occurred. In other words, were people just riding along, or were they using the touch screen giving specific commands that make it freeze every time, or was a saved route being followed, etc.?

I also wonder if those who have had theirs freeze have some other thing in common. For example, were maps uploaded a certain way? Was an upload interrupted due to failure, etc.?

If something can be identified and associated with the freeze, that would probably point to where the problem is in the software. In other words, is there "something" repeatable that will cause a freeze every time?

IME, software typically stops functioning when some sort of exception that it has not been programmed to handle crops up. "Exception handling" is one key to good software, because you can never fully predict all conditions before your software goes out into the field.

ETA: I visited zumoforums.com and there are several other people reporting the freeze issue, although they don't all use the term "freeze".

I called Garmin Support to ask if there was a way to delete routes from the GPS via BaseCamp. There isn't, but I asked about freezing and she thought that if that is happening there is a good chance that some file or files became corrupted and that one should re-install the GPS software on the unit. She was nice enough to email me the instructions for doing this:

[FONT=&quot]Please allow your device to charge for 7-8 hours and then update the unit's software: [/FONT]
Starting at the WebUpdater page: (http://www.garmin.com/<wbr>products/webupdater/<wbr>howtoinstall.jsp)

1. [FONT=&quot]Plug your unit into the computer via the USB cable [/FONT]
2. [FONT=&quot]Click on Download under step 1 [/FONT]
3. [FONT=&quot]Select the appropriate version of the WebUpdater based on your computer's operating system [/FONT]
4. [FONT=&quot]Click "I agree to the above terms and want to proceed to the download page" [/FONT]
5. [FONT=&quot]Click Download [/FONT]
6. [FONT=&quot]Select Run when the pop up box appears [/FONT]
7. [FONT=&quot]Select Run if a message appears asking "Do you want to run this software?" [/FONT]
8. [FONT=&quot]Click Next when the WebUpdater installation page appears [/FONT]
9. [FONT=&quot]Check the box to accept the licensing terms and select Next [/FONT]
10. [FONT=&quot]Select Done to complete the WebUpdater download[/FONT]

Once WebUpdater is installed on your computer, select the application, if it does not automatically open, to run the program and follow the prompts.

1. [FONT=&quot]Select Next on the WebUpdater Wizard [/FONT]
2. [FONT=&quot]Select Find Device and Next [/FONT]
3. [FONT=&quot]Select Next to update the unit software on your device and follow the prompts[/FONT]

Once you have run the software updates and updated your device, you will be prompted to search for additional updates. To load any additional updates, check the box next to the specific updates you wish to download. Select anything that relates to firmware, GPS software, traffic, Bluetooth, vehicles, or voice languages relating to the versions you use. Once selected, click Next and check the Agreement box. At this point the updates will run directly to your Garmin device. Once the update is complete you will see a box showing the downloads and if they were a success. Click Finish and unplug your Garmin from the computer to allow the updates to load. Once the update(s) are loaded, your device will return to the normal agreement screen and it will be ready to operate.
Notes:

• [FONT=&quot]Internet connection is required to communicate with the Garmin server and download applicable Software updates. [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]WebUpdater is not compatible with Palm and Pocket PC devices, fixed-mount marine units, aviation units, chartplotters, or fishfinders. [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]WebUpdater updates the applicable Garmin device with the most current software version available. Check back frequently for additional updates.[/FONT]

Hi buddy, I used to be a software developed, and all you say make sense here, the ideal scenario would be to get a process trace/memory dump to be analyzed by Garmin, however they seem to not have any tool for this.

Regarding your question, I already tried to isolate this issue but I don't have nothing really consistent on this, here is what I found so far:

- It happened to me only at the map screen
- it happened to me only when navigating (following a route) most of my time I'm under this criteria)
- it happened without any manual intervention from my side, which means, I did not switched the pages, or tried to use any functionality (touchscreen or not)
- There were few cases where it happened when returning from trip computer to the map page
- I don't have any custom map loaded other than the one who comes with the unit (in my case City Navigator Brazil)
- All available updates (firmware) are up to date

I guess that's all

since this is resolved after doing the master reset, I believe this is something related to cumulative information such as TrackLog records.
I have disabled this option this weekend after doing the master reset, but is too soon to evaluate if either resolved the issue or not.

BTW Garmin seems to be limited to ask me to do the reset.

I just saw this update, I'll have a look, and try it too.

Thanks,

Best of luck with it!

Please keep us posted on your progress. I will return to this thread if/when I have anything related to ask or offer.

Many thanks for your inputs, btw, are you also having the same issue with the Zumo 350 ?

Happy to be of help.

I am not having the freezing issue. I thought I did today when I imported a route that I had created from a track, but it wasn't really frozen, it was just too busy to respond. It was busy splitting the newly imported route into 12 separate ones because the one I made from the track had so many points in it. Once it finished doing that, it responded to input normally again. But, of course I realized that I did not want 12 routes to take me 80 miles and it is many touches to the screen to delete each one. This is why I called support with my question about if a route could be deleted from the GPS using BaseCamp.