Thread: MARQ Commander (Gen 1) stuck in recovery loop – WebUpdater rejects official firmware

Thanks for the reply. It's sad that nobody has ever managed to recover one of these watches.

Just to add a few more observations for completeness:

• WebUpdater downloads the official firmware as Update.RGN, but the file is byte-for-byte identical (same SHA-256) to the official MARQCommander_2050.gcd downloaded from Garmin.
• When using WebUpdater in the normal way, it reports: "The update file is corrupted."
• However, when I launch WebUpdater by explicitly passing the official .gcd file on the command line (or by dragging the .gcd onto the executable), I get a different error: "Garmin device cannot program the required memory region."

..................................

I have an important update.

I converted the official MARQCommander_2050.gcd to .rgn using RGN_Tool (although RGN_Tool cannot determine the HWID and told me that he hope I know what I'm doing. I guess this is because the .gcd file doesn't have the format RNG_Tool expected).

Nevertheless Updater.exe sucessfuly flashed the generated .rgn file to the watch and the watch entered firmware update mode.

The firmware update icon appeared and the progress bar advanced to approximately 50% before getting stuck.

After reboot to the pre-boot mode the watch now reports:

MARQ MARQ V20.50
Unit ID 3307926622

Previously it reported:

MARQ MARQ V3.40
Unit ID 0

So at least part of the firmware update succeeded.

I guess all I'm missing at this stage is an .RNG file properly converted from the .GCD one.

Does anyone know if this is possible to get?
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I have another update.

After reboot, the gear icon no longer appears. The watch now shows only a progress bar along the bottom of the screen. The bar advances rapidly to approximately 50% and then stops.

While in this state, Garmin Express identifies the watch correctly as MARQ V20.50, completes synchronization successfully, and Garmin Connect updates the last sync time.

So from the Garmin Express point of view that watch looks completely normal - it doesn't propose any actions to be performed.

But the watch still stuck in the progress bar screen.

Does anyone know what this progress bar represents on the Fenix 6 / first-generation MARQ platform? Is it still part of the firmware update process, or is it a post-update initialization or database migration step?

By the way, the watch is not exposed as a USB mass-storage device.

Spoiler: Image

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