RoamingGecko

I thought I would take a moment to describe how to fix a problem that popped up with my GPSMap 60 this weekend in the event it happens to someone else who might be using this model. I have to tell you, GPS’s are great tools when you are traveling unfamiliar roads but it’s no fun at all when they stop working. I know you all have been lectured on the proper way to shut down your computers by we IT people and you might not really understand why or even believe that you can corrupt your system by shutting it down improperly but I am here to tell you, it can happen. In the process of trying to turn on my GPS’s back light, I shunted the system and corrupted the software on the chipset. I turned the unit on and in an attempt to turn on the back light while driving and paying more attention to the road than the unit, which is a good thing by the way, I turned off the unit while it was still in the process of booting up. Instant chipset corruption! You will know when this happens because your unit will be stuck perpetually at the screen seen in the second image of this post.

Believe me when I tell you, your GPS will not acquire a satellite no matter how long you leave it on, no matter how long you leave it off and then try turning it back on, removing the the batteries or swapping out the unit’s SD card. The chipset’s software had been corrupted and it will not work properly until you have reloaded the chipset software. The easiest way to tell if you have encountered this problem is to check the software version of your GPS. If the GPS SW version is 0.00, then you have indeed corrupted the chipset and will need to reload the software. The third image of this post will show you what version number I am referring to.

As I have said, in order to get your GPS unit functioning again you will need to reinstall the chipset software. There are two ways to do this. You can use the Web Updater program that you probably installed when you first bought the unit. You will find it under the Garmin menu from your Start menu. The second way would be to install the chipset software manually using the the “G” chipset installer. The second method is the one I used as I kept getting a “Transfer Error” when I tried to use the Web Updater software. You can download this software directly from Garmin, if you can find it. I think they want folks to use the Web Updater software as they aren’t real up front on where to download the actual installer packages. If you like you can download the software from this site here.

Installing the software in fairly simple. Connect the GPSMap 60 to your computer using the mini-USB cable that came with your unit and then run the installer. Refer to your Owner’s Manual if you need further assistance. All that being said, I love my GPSMap 60 and this minor bump in the road has not changed my opinion of the unit. It’s been a great little unit and I fully expect it to remain so for years to come.

Note: The screens above are not the actual screens, just approximations I created in PS to give folks a visual. The actual screens will looks slightly different. I wrote this post to help others should they have this problem with their GPSMap 60’s as I didn’t find a lot of clear help on the web when I researched the problem. If you have more questions, please feel free to comment below.