Thread: Garmin nuvi 1690 stuck on Garmin logo after power on

The vast majority of Garmin devices stuck on logo screen are soft bricked and can still access preboot. Hard bricked devices with flash disk damage are generally not recoverable. To check if preboot is available, first open Device Manager from Windows Control Panel and leave it visible. Ensure that the device is fully OFF, hold the power button down to force it off if necessary. Have a 'known-good' USB cable directly connected to your PC using only a USB2 not USB3 port [not through a hub]. Hold the top LH corner of the 1690's screen firmly with your left thumb and connect the microUSB socket into the nuvi. If preboot is available you'll see the nuvi appear as "GARMIN Device" in the control panel list. If it doesn't show in your laptop find a desktop PC, even an old XP machine will do, and use a REAR USB2 port. Also try different USB cables, sometimes even genuine Garmin ones don't work with bricked devices. Without preboot there is no way to recover the device using software cure methods.

Your problem might be tracking down the EU firmware version for HWID 1132 to make cure firmware. Other versions such as NA and AU are still available however even though the HWIDs differ from EU it may be possible to use one of them with modification of the HWID in RGN_Tool. Apart from HWID number varience, as far as i can recall the main differences in the regional versions are in the MSM sections which are no longer supported by the devices anyway. As an aside, 169x are the only nu-link devices which can use Cyclops safety cams.

Thanks for the information and I managed to get the nuvi 1690 in to preeboot mode for a short time directly after power up. It will not stay in preboot mode for long but maybe enough time to use tools to repair it.

Do you know where I can get hold of the NA firmware to try and edit the HWID version? Garmin refuses to let me download the nuvi 1690 EU firmware directly and only points out that I need to use the Garmin Express to do that but as it is not seen as a memory device in preeboot mode that will not work.