Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Garmin Freeze and Fix thanks to the Internet

My wife took my GPS, a Garmin C330, on her drive with her colleagues to Washington DC, where it apparently came quite in handy while they were traveling, especially through Pennsylvania. Her friends liked it so much a few of them are planning to buy them for themselves. I managed well enough without it for the 4 days she was gone.

Today i finally plugged it in and it immediately froze, locked solid, and i could just feel myself getting lost.

Thankfully I was well aware of my location and didn't need it, but it was worrisome that i couldn't turn it off, or make it work at all. Given I often have to go to totally new locations, the lack of the trusty Garmin C330 worried me.

Thanks to the internet however all was well once i thought to Google "Garmin C330 freeze fix." One of the search results was www.fixya.com and lo and behold there was a simple solution : Under the plastic cover frame for the screen there's a tab under the Garmin logo. Pulling on the tab takes off the screen and under it, carefully hidden away is a little button marked "reset". One push of the reset button and all was well (Unlike the helpful commenter, I did not need to wait for the batteries to die for this t work). Impressively, the Garmin has been so reliable mounted in my car I never noticed the tiny tab until it was described in that most.

Thanks to the Internet and the wisdom of techy-crowds, I'm much less likely to get lost.

3 comments:

Murphy's Law said...

See what happens when you get dependent on technology?

See what happens when you let a woman borrow your technology?

When the machines take over the world, it'll be because of people like you who trusted them. Ditch that Garmin and buy a map before it takes over your car's control systems and kills you one day. You know that they're planning it. Al Gore hates humans AND he invented the internet. Coincidence, or part of the master plan?

When his evil machines kill off 98% of you people, it'll be left to us modern-day Luddites to steal the magic ring from Goredor and take it back to destroy it in the fires of Mt. Doom. The seven will unite--the ex-cop, his dog, Sarah Connor, Sarah Palin, Donna Noble, the robot from Lost in Space, and a very quiet Norwegian Blue Parrot that pines for the fjords. Together they will embark on a quest that results in the destruction of the ring and the power of the Goracle, resulting in the fall from power of The One and his brown-shirt army of Obamatrons.

And this all has to happen because you couldn't read a map and had to buy a Garmin. On behalf of the The seven and humaniny in general, thanks a lot!

Aaron said...

I think you need to stop watching Lord of the Rings while drinking Southern Comfort. It seem to lead to a bad interaction :-)

By the way, the parrot is dead, he's not sleeping, he's nailed to his perch!

Anonymous said...

Just so we are clear on this:
1. The GPS worked well while I had it.
2. I returned it in good working order.
3. The only reason you knew where you were while the GPS was broken, was because you were IN YOUR OWN KITCHEN!