Thread: No pre-boot mode possible on DriveSmart 50 LMT-D 5 ?

I know that you do have basic Garmin knowledge such as how to enter preboot in a healthy device which is hard enough for most users, however with a device that's been firmware-bricked some additional finesse is required ..... such as using your left thumb rather than fingers to hold the screen so as to free up your right hand to first connect the cable then quickly move to the mouse or enter key. There is very good reason for the precise and detailed instructions i've written. That reason is because following them to the letter gives you the best chance to catch preboot, which is a mere brief moment at some point when the Garmin splash/start screen shows (and certainly not the whole time it shows). Once the computer image appears it's too late. The timing (and luck) is in fluking that elusive point.

* Post #1 in this thread suggests putting one finger between the G A and another one above there to enter preboot, using your thumb-pad can cover the same area as two finger tips as it's very difficult to use your finger tips while following the sequence i wrote in Post #25. Sometimes the same device can have more than one place on the screen to enter preboot also.

You may need many attempts to even see a single instance of the device details in Updater.exe's GUI and then many more to initiate a flash when you do see it! Although blind luck plays a part for sure, persistence and patience will likely pay off for you - i've given you the best possible chance based on extensive personal experience but the rest is up to you. You might do it in 10 attempts or it might take 100 or 1000... or maybe it just won't happen.

My assertion that the device now has HWID of 2826 is based on the evidence of the GarminDevice.xml copy you supplied. The device rewrites the XML on every boot but it hasn't booted since you flashed dezl cure fw to it so it also must have had original dezl fw on it before you loaded the cure fw anyway.

You're wrong to think that re-formatting might or should change anything appearing on the device's start screen or in the GUI of any software program such as RMPrepUSB or Updater.exe etc.. The format only affects the visible file system, which is in fact only one of 255 possible regions of the flash albeit by far the largest and in fact it's the majority of the total flash memory's space. In your device it'd be region 83. When you do a re-format that's the ONLY region erased, no other populated region is affected.

*EDIT: Using a china-pencil or some other soft and easily erasable marks to define the preboot area on the screen beforehand allows you to then have your thumb already pressed in position before you connect the cable to power it on.