Thread: New GPS - how to use old maps off of SD Card

Originally Posted by dasilvarsa

It's dangerous to patch a unit that is still under warranty.

Originally Posted by osiris4isis

I agreed with dasilvarsa, patching map .img is relatively safe but patching firmware is risky.

Guys, I respectfully disagree with that. Garmin will replace a bricked device under warranty immediately. They don't raise questions unless you are silly enough to say you've been mucking around with it's firmware which does of course void the warranty.

If you do 'patch' a map, i.e. unlock an img file, then having it on the device might in fact cause a problem should it get sent back to Garmin under warranty or not. Putting unofficial maps on a media card is totally safe as any problem caused by that can be reversed by the user. Even if such a map was badly corrupt and caused the device to 'brick', the problem's resolved by simply removing the card.

........ For that matter it is dangerous to patch any unit.
I sit @ the moment with 2 bricks.

Then post about them if you're stuck, we can help to un-brick if they are only software bricked.

Originally Posted by osiris4isis

.... (assuming you can get Garmin silly updater to work)

Do you mean Garmin MapUpdater? It's only been left available to service older LM devices that don't have a visible file system (the region-only types without MSM). It usually won't supply the most recent maps to modern LM device but GarminExpress will. Although GarminExpress started off as a flaky bit of , it's now been refined to the point where it's quite usable and reliable but initially I reckon they released it as a deep Alpha version, at the time I had less bugs around my back porch light. In proportion, it did brick far more devices early on than Big-Bang's firmware patcher or any other unofficial manipulation ever did, although to be fair many were 'bricked' because ppl got frustrated with GE and unsafely disconnected devices while they were being updated which resulted in corrupt files, i.e. very easy to 'de-brick'.

To my knowledge there's been no posting of a permanent bricking in the patcher thread. Provided ppl follow the cautions and tutorials there is no problem flashing patched firmware. The BIG concern would be if a wrong boot.bin is used rather than an incorrect or corrupt system firmware as flashing wrong Boot BLK and X-Loader can hard-brick any device. When patching a GCD file, only fw_all.bin is patched (the main system software). That's what is contained in region 14 (0x0E). All other components of the GCD file are untouched. Flashing a wrong firmware to rgn14 can usually be easily reversed by flashing the correct BIN file as an RGN in preboot mode. In fact there's usually no need to even have to attain preboot as the device will show 'System Software Missing' message on attempted start-up and default to preboot mode itself.

In short: Bricking by a corrupt file (usually .img or .gpi or .vpm) is super-easy to fix. Bricking by an incorrect or corrupt 'system software' flashed to rgn14 is very easy to fix usually. Bricking by a wrong boot.bin/Ldr.bin can be permanent and literally result in a 'brick' (but not always).

Originally Posted by osiris4isis

Well, I'm the first to say that I'm no "angel" but isn't that deceptive/immoral action? It's like buying an item, and you FUBAR it when Garmin warns you before hand not to do it and then sending it back to get it fixed for free (this of course if it's still under warranty) I can see it now, a bunch of new model of Garmin unit arrive in tech support/repair group. They investigate and found firmware was bogus. They started looking around in forum and found out why. Then of course the consequences follows.

If you consider it to be 'lying by omission' then yes, it's deceptive. But I do take the view that it's their obligation to ask questions about the circumstances if they want that information. To be clear, as I said I'm not aware of any device being bricked by use of the firmware patcher, nor am I aware of Garmin ever hunting down reasons why a device was bricked under warranty and then taking some negative action. They simply replace the device with another new or 'refurbished' device of the same model, send the other device to some mysterious chop-shop to JTAG it and re-program it and so the cycle goes on. It's hardly worth their while to do otherwise and maybe cop negative publicity about that kind of corporate vigilante mindset against customers. Turning the same device around after subjecting it to a repair process would maybe take weeks or maybe even months, their warranty replacement policy means ppl get a working navigator back within a relatively short period. A friend of mine left a near-new nuvi on his windscreen in the middle of summer in Wyoming for several hours. It then wouldn't turn on, just black screen. He had a new one back within about a week, absolutely no questions asked other than what the problem was and yet that's a problem well-known to be caused by exposure to excessive heat. Had Garmin actually asked the circumstances he told me he'd have owned up he said but didn't feel obligated when they only asked the symptoms not how it happened.

Interesting, I'm not surprise that Garmin might have a counter-cracked security check or something got corrupted and your unit FUBAR because of a bad .img
But never seen one posting of that problem.

Well, it'd only be a problem if they found the bad img file and then realized it was an 'unlocked' map. But they'd have to go looking first of course and maybe they would if it was a serial warranty claimer.

Whatever that was needed to do a map update for nuvi765 LTM; I remembered going through a lot of pain trying to do it on WinXP and finally gave up.

That would probably have been Garmin LifetimeUpdater. Useless soft and never worked properly, eventually was withdrawn thank goodness.

Excellent info/tips. Need to be in future FAQ.

Thanks. However it might make less sense to someone less skilled in firmware. It makes total sense to you, but if you were a user who only knows how to use their device but with little knowledge of HOW it works then it's probably mumbo-jumbo. Even trying to get info out of some ppl as to what happened before the 'bricking' is like trying to get blood from a stone. Many of them simply don't understand why you want to know. If they fully understood the actual way the device works they could 'un-brick' it themselves anyway without help provided it's possible to be revived.