Garmin 800 - joke of the century?

[bikey-mikey]

Yep, my new 800 let me down on the way back from Lymington, so I have lost the entire 900 km of rides over those four days!!  Bugger it !!

Basically it would not recharge from the Tecknet, on the way back on Monday, nor from it's supplied mains charger (at a Costas) ((possibly cos it kept saying it could not find the satellite, and possibly cos it was still recording, and maybe using more juice than the charger was supplying?) so I saved the last ride and restarted several times, and this morning tried to recharge using every different lead I had, both direct and via the laptop, and no joy...

The helpdesk say they would replace it for me, but cannot retrieve the data....

It seems as if the problem is on the 'socket' rather than the leads, cos they all still work with my old 705....

It didn't get wet - the rubber bung was securely in - I was getting a message "The adapter is connected to the wrong accessory" but what that means is a mystery....

A couple of times it started when plugged in, but came up with a new screen where you can change the background, check ANT+ etc, but not one where you could use it as an external drive and download the data...

Any ideas before I get out the sledgehammer??

[mike]

ouch.  I lost everything off my 705 when I did jog->le last year.  Same as you, got home and plugged it in to be told it was blank.

like you, they offered to replace it FOC but couldnt save the data.  I tried everything i could think of, including trying to transfer it to another ANT+ device, to another 705, giving it to an IT data recovery firm to see what they could do - all failed. So I got an upgrade to an 800 (free), it hasnt let me down yet but I just lost confidence in it!!

My suspicion is that water got in to the 705 somehow and it borked it, might it have happened to yours?

Sorry.  Sledgehammer might be the only option!

[loadsabikes]

What better excuse for repeating the ride.
bloody annoying though!

[jogler]

ouch.  I lost everything off my 705 when I did jog->le last year.

that would have been a massive let down for me & my E2E

it's these sort of incidents which convince me to stay with maps

[Euan Uzami]

It sounds like the problem my garmin nuvi 1340 car sat nav has got. It will switch on but then turn off again after a couple of seconds, as if the battery is dead, but it does it even when plugged in.
It must have a charger built into it - the lead goes directly from the mains transformer to the unit. By contrast, ayup lights for instance have a separate transformer - all the electronic gubbins to do the charging are in a separate yellow box, which imho is a better design decision as you don't need to skimp on the performance of the charger in order to make it compact enough to fit in the main unit. A garmin 800 is tiny, smaller than an etrex - yet it's got a charger in there as well. It can't be that good a charger.

Mike - I'd be surprised if any data has actually been wiped from it, albeit that doesn't help you actually retrieve it. Have you tried the garmin forums? If for instance you can diagnose it from there and it's a repair you can do yourself, for instance change the battery, then you could try that, if not, you could always try sending it to garmin for repair but with instructions that you would like them to try not to delete the recordings if at all possible.
If they can get it working again without doing a factory reset then it might be possible to just retrieve the rides off it in the normal way.

[bikey-mikey]

Problem was that even the solutions from the garmin forum needed the box to have some juice in it, which it didn't, presumably cos the socket or transformer had broken...

My LBS came up trumps within 24 hours and today replaced it with a new 800 (with even more memory). This was a fine effort, cos Garmin were saying that their turnaround on warranty could be SIX weeks.... the LBS will submit the broken one for 'replacement under warranty' in due course, so they are effectively lending me the unit pro tem and the warranty replacement when it happens will go back into their stock - an even finer effort.. 

Thanks guys!! 

[PloddinPedro]

Good work by the LBS (without stepping into the minefield of consumer rights and exactly what their legal obligations were) and another example of why we should support them when possible - that kind of help is not usually available from on-line merchants.

[eeymsmo]

Setting the new one to log ride data to the memory card may be a good idea. That way you can at least eject it and try to get at it using a normal card reader if the unit fails.

(That's my plan, but never had to try it so far [touch wood])

[mike]

Mike - I'd be surprised if any data has actually been wiped from it, albeit that doesn't help you actually retrieve it. Have you tried the garmin forums? If for instance you can diagnose it from there and it's a repair you can do yourself, for instance change the battery, then you could try that, if not, you could always try sending it to garmin for repair but with instructions that you would like them to try not to delete the recordings if at all possible.
If they can get it working again without doing a factory reset then it might be possible to just retrieve the rides off it in the normal way.

yup, tried all that, me, garmin and my local computer repair place spent about three months trying to get everything off it, then gave up...   [crys quietly, then remembers the fun I had on the ride and has a bit of cake]

[Euan Uzami]

Problem was that even the solutions from the garmin forum needed the box to have some juice in it, which it didn't, presumably cos the socket or transformer had broken...

My LBS came up trumps within 24 hours and today replaced it with a new 800 (with even more memory). This was a fine effort, cos Garmin were saying that their turnaround on warranty could be SIX weeks.... the LBS will submit the broken one for 'replacement under warranty' in due course, so they are effectively lending me the unit pro tem and the warranty replacement when it happens will go back into their stock - an even finer effort.. 

Thanks guys!! 

but have you saved your 9 points ?! 

[bikey-mikey]

but have you saved your 9 points ?! 

Well both events are on the webpage, so that's five of them, and dare I say the important ones as regards you know what....

The other four points are in Ian's hands - luckily I stopped for coffee a lot, and they all show on my Costa statement, and I paid the hotel before I left, and also took a few piccies which I texted to the other half, including one about 2 K from the furthest control, and they are time stamped , and I bought flowers at the garage at the end of the road for SWMBO (let me go away for the weekend so fair's fair) so I can more or less prove I did the controls / rides..