Thread: Garmin DriveAssist 51 freezes at power-off

I'm experiencing a couple of issues with my Garmin DriveSmart 51. In fact it's never been right since purchase. I had hoped that a firmware update would fix it.

1) Minor problem: Single press of the rear power button should put the unit into standby (according to the user manual). In fact, it appears to nothing. Long press of the rear power button (>8 seconds) causes the unit to reboot, which is as expected.

2) Major problem: Removing power (either 12V or the rear USB) pops up a screen dialog: "External power has been lost. Turning off in 00:15". When the countdown reaches 00:00 the dialog disappears but the main display remains in a frozen state. The unit is unresponsive at this point, even to re-application of power, and displaying whatever it was prior to removing power.

The only way I can get the device to power off properly is to first force a reboot (long-press of the power button) and then after reboot it when starts up with "Turn off the device?" clicking on "Yes" to which it turns off immediately. By properly I mean that subsequently re-applying power, or single short-press of the power button, will boot it.

Btw, do the DriveSmart series satnav's have a similar startup prompt?

Things I have tried:

Turning off Wifi results in a slightly different behaviour to 2) above. That is after the 15s countdown the display does go blank. However re-applying power does not wake it, so it is again stuck in zombie state. I have also tried disabling every other feature possible, that is the camera recording and all driver assist functions. I have tried removing both SD cards. None of these make any difference to the issue.

Observations:

The device will run on internal battery for minutes so it seems the battery should be good enough to complete a shutdown sequence.

The device *is* capable (in hardware) of cutting its own power under software control, demonstrated by clicking "Yes" to "Turn off the device?" at startup. Which leads me to suspect a firmware issue.

The power button is physically working, demonstrated as a long-press will force a reboot, and a single short-press will wake it when it's not in zombie state. Which also leads me to suspect a firmware issue.

However, after several software updates, all done over Wifi, and a factory reset of all settings, the above issues persist.

@M Dominique
You may need to hard reset it or even clear it's non-volatile memory: [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]. [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

I tried both a hard reset and a nonvol clear, albeit with slightly different procedures to the instructions in those links. Clearing the nonvol was something I was not aware of, so thanks for that. Unfortunately neither of these resolve the issue.

I find it difficult to see how it could be a hardware fault with this particular unit - it can be cleanly turned off via the startup dialog, suggesting the circuit works in that respect. However if it was just a firmware issue then there should be reports from other users, that said I'm not sure how popular this model is/was either.

I'm tempted to open it up and disconnect the battery.

Any weird symptoms not remedied by hard reset/clear nonvol may at worst be indicating a partial flash failure. If the device is under warranty i'd suggest return it for exchange because once you open it (they'll likely know!) you'll potentially compromise the warranty. If it's out of warranty then certainly open it and disconnect the battery for an extended period to drain all change from the board, even leave it overnight to be sure.