Thread: Need Help with Bricked nuvi 1490

14 and 127 are healthy so corruption to the the fw data is not the direct reason the device won't start. Can you see anything on the screen below the Garmin logo just before it flashes white, such as "Loading Maps"?

Nothing at all. When it was working there was a green progress line on the bottom when connected to pc and "loading maps" when connected to power. Now it just sits on the Garmin logo, flashes white for a fraction of a second and restarts. It might be the map that's doing it. Is there a way to remove the map file with the procedure #14? The gps is not recognized by the pc at all.

Originally Posted by cbstealth

..... Is there a way to remove the map file with the procedure #14? ....

Yes it works to delete files which is why i asked about any message on boot. We could just assume that a detail map is the problem and delete any possible map in the .System folder and the entire Map folder. All can be easily replaced if this device can be recovered. Similarly with the folders JVC, Keyboards, GPX, POI, Text, Voice and Vehicle. Best to firstly see what's in the internal memory and have a copy of it before deleting stuff anyway. Using the hex modified boot.bin RGN in Updater.exe with preboot, try to flash this as update.txt in SD:

Code:

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It'll take many minutes to complete depending on the total size and you'll need to use a reasonable size card, 8GB should be plenty but not over 32GB unless you reformat it as FAT32 because 64GB> are exFAT which your Garmin won't recognize. Before you start make sure to remove last_id.bin from the 0972 folder or it likely won't start the flash. It will create a new folder "Backup" in the Garmin folder which should contain the entire file system.

The gps is not recognized by the pc at all.

Well not quite, it is recognized for a period in preboot as evidenced by the fact we can use the modded boot.bin as RGN. Also as indicated in your pic in Post #3 but it drops preboot with that error when it starts to write to one of the regions, likely 14 or possibly 127. While in preboot it will be shown in Device Manager but not seen by Windows Explorer.

The big concern is whether there is physical damage preventing writing to a region. Clearly we can write from the 2 fw regions and the nonvol also. Our next logical step if there are no obviously corrupt files on-board is to erase region 41 which if corrupt can cause these symptoms too. It's a process of elimination where we start by using the least damaging/invasive fixes and progressing to a sledgehammer approach. Frankly if cleaning the onboard memory and finally progressing to erasing region 41 doesn't work then it's game-over for sure.