Thread: How to unbrick a nüvi - step by step guide

My pleasure, i like mucking around with this stuff. When you open it up, please do consider my suggestion of leaving the battery disconnected for a while, an hour or even overnight to be sure. It may then power on again and we can try something else i've thought of. A very clever guy, user name kunix who made Cure3 and QuickCure3 also made a little known program he called 'gfwpack'. I guess that means Garmin Firmware Packer 'cos that's what it does. Reduces the size of a firmware. I think he did that primarily so as to enable a fw_all.bin which was too large to use in cross-flashing to modify another device's region14, because of the intended region's limited space.

Now, looking at what was successfully dumped from your device, even though it seems that there is ~10MiB before the damaged area starts, clearly the flash of fw_all.bin was fritzed. The entire (healthy) region has 16MiB available as i also mentioned earlier, however current and recent fw_all.bin component is only ~9MiB but it isn't loaded to your undamaged area of region14 (maybe doesn't miss by much, but still ...). However, a compressed (packed) BIN file might load properly. I've been able to pack V5.90 fw_all.bin down to under 5.5MiB so ... it..might..work.

Let me know if you can get it to liven up and if so if you want to try a last gasp attempt.

Battery is disconnected now and I'll try it again tomorrow. Wish me luck!

HI all...This is Ivan from Chile. Cannot find a working link to download GarminCure...do you have any?

Originally Posted by imarinkovic

HI all...This is Ivan from Chile. Cannot find a working link to download GarminCure...do you have any?

[Link removed]
Link to other forum removed as contrary to this forum's rules. In any case the file is attached and has been downloaded thousands of time from the initial post of our thread [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].

@wotsup
Just drag the RGN file manually onto Updater.exe and it'll load ok.

Thanks for that, the updater screen now appeared and I could choose 'USB device' problem is the computer is not seeing the Nuvi, and if I hold top LH corner of screen after
plugging in the Nuvi the screen remains perfectly blank for as long as I hold the corner with thumb, I did once get another dialogue box saying loading but it was greyed out
and did nothing although I left it for ages. Also got another message 'no updates found' although .RGN, .GCD, updater.exe and cure all in same directory - main problem seems
to be that PC does not detect the Nuvi as a USB device.

My Nuvi 1490 boots up, sometimes says 'loading maps' and mostly goes to password screen, if it enter password PIN it goes to another screen and a green bar moves across lower part of
Nuvi screen, sometimes a few mm, sometimes halfway, sometimes all the way, then goes back to password screen..........



Do not quote previous post.
Please read complete [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].

Ok, it might just be that you don't have [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] loaded, that's needed to even connect in preboot. You can check if it's recognized in preboot by leaving Device Manager open on your desktop when you connect, it should show up under "GARMIN Devices". Also be very sure that your 1490 has HWID 1104 because the other possible HWID for 14xx devices is 0972. Connect it in preboot to check with G7ToWin or if you have a file system backup look at its GarminDevice.xml file found in the 'Garmin' folder. More info here: [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].

Bootlooping bricked devices can be tricky to get into preboot, however once a flash is started they will usually hold preboot no problem. Best to have Updater.exe (or G7ToWin if checking HWID that way) already open with the RGN file loaded to it and it's GUI visible on your desktop so that you can quickly initiate the process. Then follow this:

• Ensure the nuvi is completely OFF, you may need to hold down the power button for up to 10 or even ~30 seconds to force it off.
• Plug a 'known-good' miniUSB cable directly into a REAR port of a desktop PC (USB2 only not USB3 and no hub or front port).
• Hold the top LH corner of the nuvi screen while plugging the cable into it watching the app's GUI closely.
• IMMEDIATELY the nuvi is recognized start the process and hold the screen until finished.

If you miss it start again ensuring the device is OFF. Normally a healthy 1xxx device will hold preboot for about half a minute but a bootlooping device may drop it in as little as a couple of seconds so you'll then need to be very fast and also persistent.

Thanks a lot. It helped me to restore 3 nuvi1390 and one

eTrex 35 Touch! - Here it was necessary to downgrade to an older version. It was cured and could be updated by garminexpress!

Unfortunately there is no method to build a cure firmware for vivoactive hr.