Heads up! The Garmin Enduro 3 is down to $849, some $50 off. That’s the lowest price to date on this new device. The Enduro 3 is notable though because it’s basically a Fenix 8 Solar minus the dive/voice features (and the Fenix 8 Solar/MIP starts at $1,099). Everything else is there, and it gets all Fenix 8 software features (and, insane battery life). Meanwhile, the Fenix 7 down to $429! Or Epix at $409. There’s a bunch more sports tech deals listed here too!
Here I was, just minding my own business trying to take photos for my Instinct 3 review, when some, but not all, of the watches kept crashing and rebooting every time I opened up the sports menu. Little did I know, this was the beginning of a very bad day for Garmin. The end of which isn’t yet known.
Note that if your device is not crashing, then you’re safe and good to go at this point. However, for those that are crashing (or, want details on what happened), read below.
The Crash Issue:
Currently, a wide spectrum of watches are crashing/rebooting when a user opens up anything that starts/triggers the GPS. The watch list includes, but is very much not limited to:
– Garmin Descent series (newer models)
– Garmin Edge series (x40 & x50)
– Garmin Forerunner 165/255/265/955/965
– Garmin Epix Series
– Garmin Fenix 7/8 Series
– Garmin Instinct 3 Series
– Garmin Tactix 7 Series
– Garmin Vivoactive 4/5 Series
– Garmin Venu 3 Series
I say ‘not limited to’, because Garmin hasn’t provided a list. Instead, the ‘Internet at Large’ has, via countless forums & social media sites. Roughly speaking, this list appears to align with devices using Garmin’s current GPS chipset.
In terms of the crashes, it’s specific to any time you open up the sport list, attempting to start a GPS-based sport. Or, for any other app that accesses GPS. This includes:
– Starting the sports menu to see a list of GPS sports
– Opening a GPS sport
– Opening the ‘Navigate’ app
– Opening the ‘Tides’ app and choosing nearest location
– Attempting to do anything with navigation/routing/etc…
All of which will result in the watch rebooting, back to the watch face. Even attempting to get an indoor (non-GPS) activity can be tricky, as depending on the exact model, it’ll immediately start searching for GPS in the background while you choose the sport mode. However, in my experience, if you tap to the indoor mode and select it quick enough, you’ll be OK.
The Cause:
So what’s the cause?
The same cause it was four years ago when this happened: The satellite pre-cache file (also called the CPE or EPO file). Basically, that’s the file that the GPS chipset uses to more quickly find GPS satellites. In a world before pre-cache files, it would take 20-60 seconds. Now, it takes 1-3 seconds. Think of it like a cheat sheet for the sky/satellites.
That file gets updated on your watch every few days, and generally goes stale within a week. However, if a bad version of the file gets delivered, then chaos can ensue – as we saw a few years ago, when it impacted far more than just Garmin, but also Suunto, Polar, Wahoo, COROS, and others on the Sony chipset at the time. In the case of back-then, this resulted in offset GPS tracks, rather than instant restarts of the watch. While your watch only receives a new file every few days, new CPE files are generated by the server daily, and thus the variability on whether your watch has the offending file, or not.
In order to fix the issue, Garmin removed the bad CPE file that was propagated to your watches (they get this file from the GPS chipset providers), and then made available a good version of the file. The challenge then becomes getting your watch to grab that new good file, versus trying to keep eating the old cheat-sheet.
The Fix Options:
Now, there are essentially four different fixes at play, ranging from ‘easy-peasy’ to ‘@#$#’. You’ll try these successively until resolved, though, you can try #4 before #3, if you’re a bit more technical. Garmin has confirmed the issue here is a corrupted CPE file (satellite precache file). Garmin also has a support article as well.
Fix 1: Sync to Garmin Connect Mobile (or Garmin Express) to update
Assuming your watch isn’t boot-looping (crashing constantly over and over), then open up your phone.
Next, on your phone, open up Garmin Connect Mobile. Or, on a computer, Garmin Express (on a computer, simply let it sync automatically).
On a phone, then select ‘More’ to access more options
Select ‘Garmin Devices’ to see your devices
Then tap to sync. That should sync a new file over.
In my case, Fix #1 didn’t work. So, I moved on to Fix #2
Fix #2: Soft reboot your unit, then sync
Long-hold the upper left button for about 20-30 seconds, until it forces off. Then power back on.
Next, on your phone, open up Garmin Connect Mobile.
Then select ‘More’ to access more options
Select ‘Garmin Devices’ to see your devices
Then tap to sync. That should sync a new file over. You’ll notice it might take a bit longer to sync.
This fixed one of my watches, though it hasn’t fixed one of the other ones yet. I’d recommend pausing until Garmin has other fix options, before resetting your watch. But, in the event you want to do that (or it’s decided that’s the only option), then to reset the watch, you’ll do this next step:
Fix #3: Factory reset:
This method is if you can’t get yourself out of a boot loop. You’ll lose all data on your watch, though, all of your activity/history/etc is already synced on Garmin Connect. This is mostly annoying in that you may need to re-setup all your settings (some Garmin watches will restore them automatically). Note: If you’re a little bit techie, you can try Fix 4 first, which will save you the hard reset.
Power off the watch (long hold power button until it shuts off).
If the watch is still boot looping, then do an unprompted factory reset (steps here).
Then go through setting up your watch again. Yes, it sucks.
The bad CPE file has already been removed from Garmin’s servers, so all of these steps are really about getting it cleaned off your watch, and getting the fresh copy back.
Fix 4: Manually Removing the Offending File
This method can technically be done prior to Fix 3, and has worked for some people instead of a full reset. Equally though, if Fix 3 isn’t working, then you’ll need to do this too. Essentially, we need to get rid of the bad file from the file system, this does it a bit more surgically, as opposed to the ‘blow up the whole building’ approach of Fix 3.
On PC: Once powered off, then have your computer ready and hold the upper left button (light button) down while connecting it to a computer. On some devices, this is instead holding the start/stop button. It should then enumerate on your computer where you can navigate to the /Garmin/RemoteSW folder, and within that, delete the file called GPE.bin file. This file is the problem child file.
On Mac: You’ll need a tool like Android File Transfer, OpenMTP, or MacDroid (which is what I use). Once powered off, then have your computer ready and hold the upper left button (light button) down while connecting it to a computer. On some devices, this is instead holding the start/stop button. It should then enumerate on your computer where you can navigate to the /Garmin/RemoteSW folder, and within that, delete the file called GPE.bin. This file is the problem child file.
Extra Tips: If #4 isn’t working, it’s likely because the file isn’t going away. Triple-check that the GPE.bin file is actually gone after dismounting/disconnecting. Sometimes it takes two tries. Second, if you can’t get the watch to mount (most likely on a Mac), double-check that Garmin Express is closed (especially in the upper taskbar), and there are some webcam apps that will hold the connection open. Close those. Sometimes rebooting the Mac will let you see it. As one who constantly has to deal with getting MTP devices to show up on a Mac, it can be fickle to get it to mount. Finally, in the case of my Forerunner 965, oddly, letting the battery get down to almost empty (3%) seemed to finally kick it out of its wonky boot loop (which it was doing for 6hrs+). It quietly grabbed the file behind the scenes, and all was well. No reset was required.
Technically, if you can access the file system when connected to a computer without holding the button, then that works too. Either way, you’ll want to kill off the GPE.bin file. Fear not, Garmin will sync a new clean copy to your watch.
What’s Next:
At this point, if your watch is working, you’re good to go. With the offending file removed, it’s not going to start causing your watch to crash. Likewise, for those that do have a crashing watch (either only when accessing GPS, or non-stop rebooting), then you can use one of the fixes above. Obviously, if Fix 1, 2, or 4 don’t work, then Fix 3 isn’t awesome, but it will work.
As for Garmin, certainly, they’ll need to be looking at how this slipped through. I’d have assumed (well, I know) they put in place procedures to prevent the previous CPE issue from a few years ago from occurring in the future. But as with most software/platform meltdowns, their mitigation/QC steps to prevent issues with the previous CPE from reaching consumers didn’t account for today’s scenario. Both at the file-checking level (as these files are generated daily), but also at the watch level. Certainly, a malformed/corrupted/whatever file, shouldn’t be causing the watch to crash either. Obviously, that indicates a technical bug in the GPS stack for a lot of Garmin devices (all sharing the same code). As is usually the case, there will be many lessons learned here for Garmin, and equally, probably a number of really angry consumers.
Thus, today seems like a good day for a (non-GPS) yoga session. Or, you can pick up that awesome Dumpster Fire stuffie (or coffee cup) my wife got me for Christmas. Perfect timing.
Thanks for reading!
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My Forerunner 965 is stuck in the reboot – crash loop. I get the blue triangle then it crashes again. Holding down the power button as Garmin suggested doesn’t work for me. Ugh, my watch is bricked.
Try a forced hard reset. When switched off hold down “start/stop” and “back”. Then power on the watch. After the first beep release “start/stop” , after the second beep release “back”. This should now factory reset the device
Had the same, hard reset worked but no restore from previous settings – the opposite was the case, the backup was gone in GC mobile. Had to set up from scratch. BTW: is there maybe a list of what is stored in which file? I have a backup of the whole Fenix 8 filesystem from some weeks ago, but there is no useful source on what I should restore to ge i.e. my sensor setup back – this ist the most annoying thing besides setting up the activities screens …
I learned that after shutting it down, connect it to a computer, start the watch with the light button, immediately press/hold the start/stop button for 30 seconds. Then the watch makes a connection with the PC and I was able to browse the files and delete the corrupted file. Now watch is fine again.
My watch (255m) was fine this morning but I got notice of the problem on Reddit. Tried to check for an updated and it did found one but it wasn’t a firmware update. I’m still on 21.22.
Anyway, after the watch download the update it immediately crashed when I hit the start button. I hard reseted it, restored the backup that didn’t have the broken file, disabled auto update and through my phone set the gps to gps-only for the running activity.
It’s working fine so far. So it seems I was able to prevent this to happen again.
I have a little different scenario and it always involves navigation.
1) I select an activity, select a course and get gps without a problem. When I start the activity the watch restarts. Do the same thing again and there is no problem. It’s random.
2) I start an activity with a course, and then somewhere mid-run the watch restarts. It does come back in the current activity and course but I have to manually resume. So if you didn’t notice the restart you lose a part of the activity.
I think the issue started after adding the 2 fields map overlay, I removed that now and am testing it that resolves it for me.
I’m in the UK and my 265 has crashed, no matter which buttons are pressed its stuck on the blue triangle – I did uplaod a new session today so that may be part of the problem
Ensure the watch is powered off.
You may need to hold LIGHT for up to 30 seconds to turn the watch off.
Press LIGHT to power the watch on.
When the Garmin triangle appears, press and hold START/STOP and BACK.
After the first beep release START/STOP.
After the second beep release the BACK.
This completely reset my 265 but at least I have a working watch!
– Just been for a run and all seems OK for now
What if none of the above methods are working (which seems to be my case for Epix Pro Gen 2)? When calling Garmin this morning they said to sit tight and we will get an email with instructions, I’m just feeling a bit pessimistic given even the unprompted reset is doing nothing at all, and I can’t get the watch to come up on a PC or Mac either.
People with Edges have been experience boot and course load issues. Here is a banner from the top of Garmin’s EDGE forums:
“We are aware of users who are seeing boot loops or devices being stuck on the Garmin logo when trying to start GPS activities. We understand the impact of this disruption and are currently investigating a cause and will remove this message when a resolution is found.
Thank you all for your patience as we work to resolve this. “
Thanks for this! That’s strange – I get the beta updates and my Epix Pro has been just fine. Did a run an outdoor run a couple of hours ago with no problems.
CPE still current? No problem with GPS Lock? Yesterday My FR245 CPE is Missing and can’t get GPS lock at all, but now CPE is current and working normally
At least for me, I was able to get my Epix (Gen 2) to work by switching to a different yet-still-outdoor activity type. (It boot-looped twice on “Trail Run” but then when I switched to “Run”, it worked.) Not sure if it’ll generalize, but maybe worth a shot.
Got my 955 into the blue triangle spiral of doom after reading this, since as a perfect d* I had to try and see what happened.
Had to do a hard reset as posted above to learn to leave well enough alone.
At least I did a full cleanup on the watch after a few years
Happened with my Forerunner 955 about 2 hours ago just as I was starting an interval session. Switched on the workout function and instantly got the blue triangle of death.
Wish I could get my Epix 2 to actually switch off! It will not power down regardless of anybutton pressing combinations – just looping between a blank screen and the EPIX PRO splash screen!
I’ve got a forerunner 955. I followed the instructions listed in ‘fix 2’ to restart my watch, with the intention of then refreshing in garmin connect. The restart has failed – my watch is now in a reboot loop. Prior to rebooting I wasn’t having problems (but hadn’t tried recording a gps activity). I suggest not trying this fix!
My 255 went into a reboot crash loop this morning. When I connected to my computer it didn’t try to charge or even show up as a device. Did a factory restart and then loaded backup from Garmin Connect. This worked until I went to sport menu and selected ‘Run’. Then it went back into a crash loop. Tried to do another factory restart to see if maybe my backup caused the issue but it wouldn’t even factory restart. When I got through to Garmin on the phone after an understandable 40 minute wait considering they are probably slammed, I was told there was a case and they would e-mail me when there is a software fix. To Garmin support’s credit, after I explained it would not power and doesn’t show up as a device on the computer when I connect so a software update would not be possible – Garmin realized the update wouldn’t matter in my case and decided to RMA and send me a replacement. So – kudos to Garmin support for listening. Of course, after all that I then found this article so THANKS DC RAINMAKER for your support to the community.
The “fixes” would be great if the watches could actually, restart, but certainly in the case of Forerunner 255s all watches are simply showing a blue flashing triangle. No amount of holding in the light button gets out of this.
Has Garmin actually confirmed it’s a CPE file issue? I’ve seen nothing to that effect.
I’d go for Option 3 but I cannot switch the watch off to even begin the process! Any clues on how to shut this down so I can even try Option 3?
And I can’t see anywhere Garmin confirming that this is a fix, the Support website page hasn’t changed from the original message.
Thanks, but the splash screen just pops back up after that and then goes off and on again! I can’t find a way of just shutting the thing completely down!
It didn’t work when following your procedure. You said to connect to Mac using the light button. When connecting usingthe Start/Stop button per Garmin procedure it works again !
Thank you though (but maybe update the page hihi)
Thank you to the lovely folks who’ve commented here, and of course Ray for your in-depth info. I finally experienced the boot loop after having no issues until about 4pm (Ireland)…
Fixed my FR955 by doing the hard reset (light + start/stop + lap -> beeps)
Restored my backup from last week (I’d been scared to do a fresh backup today) – already on 21.22 fw (latest non-beta)
Redownloaded my watch faces – pain to reconfigure but yeah, redownloaded my spotify
Did a normal reboot (off/on) just to be sure it’s okay!
Will be using my old FR935 to run until issue is resolved but thankfully my watch seems like before, holding thumbs it’ll stay alive until a fix is published
@dcrainmaker not sure if it was mentioned here, but after a hard reset you can restore the watch settings from the app (More-Devices-Backup and Restore) and this saves a lot of the suckiness of redefining activities, fields, etc.
Just got home from work to a upset wife with a bricked FR255. Immediately turned to you and you saved me with this article. I keep my BT& Wifi sync off unless needed, so my 955 is still going. Fingers crossed that the minions find a fix. And that poor minion that caused this will have a tough time.
So I went into systems on the watch and set Statelittes to No GPS. And an hour later when I opened the activity menu I got the boot loop on my 258. So much for that setting.
In terms of making sure you haven’t got the corrupt file if your watch hasn’t crashed, can’t you just delete the GPE file via file explorer and then allow the sync to put a new one in if the old one is no longer on the servers?
Thank you Ray for digging into this and getting information out there to people. You’re certainly going to be able to reach more of us that anyone else, including Garmin.
I have a new Enduro 3 arriving today. From what I read it should be unaffected as it won’t get the corrupted GPS file when I set it up. Fingers crossed!
If this already happened some years ago maybe they can ask for help to the hackers that ransonwared Garmin back in the day; they already have the data for analysis and probably are way more skilled that Garmin
If this can (and apparently has before) crash devices, why isn’t Garmin validating this file on the server before pushing it down AND why don’t the clients (watches) validate it as well? This is dev 101 stuff.
And upon following those instructions to do a factory reset and set up the watch again, during the process of adding the watch to Connect I was offered the option of restoring a backup, which I did. The only customisation I lost was my watch face; everything else such as my Glances and activity data fields are as I’d set them up.
Thanks for the detailed explanation, Ray. Unfortunately, my Forerunner 955 is stuck in the endless blue triangle loop. I wasn’t even trying to start an activity; I just wanted to broadcast my heart rate. Now, it looks like I need to do a hard reset, loose all my setting, etc., but it’s kind of challenging to press 3 buttons at the same time, I don’t hear a beep, and I keep ending up back at the blue triangle loop. Argh! Isn’t GPS the core of what Garmin does? Seriously, how do they get it so wrong?
FR955 owner here. Stuck in the blue traingle boot loop. I’m holding off to get home and try the hardwire connection, but I don’t have much confidence. This might be it for me and Garmin. The FR 955 was awesaome when new, but the updates have killed the battery life and caused other smallish issues. Now, I’m forced to hard reset? Sorry…I think that I have a Suunto Spartan Wrist HR (or some such too long name). I’ll try to track that down and charge it up for tomorrow’s run (today’s workout was an indoor bike, so all good there – until I went outside and triggered GPS…). Seriously, Garmin ought to be either willing to pay me by my hourly rate for restoring all my settings, etc. or send me a new device as an upgrade – a FR 965, maybe…(to compensate – and ‘punish’ this awful error). Yes, I’m hot about this…totally preventable with even below standard oversight of the update impact.
Thanks for the info. I had to do a factory reset to get the triangle to disappear, but now my watch buttons aren’t all working (Forerunner 265S). The Light button only offers power off, not controls. Holding up no longer offers to watch faces or alarms; it just offers nothing. The only thing that seems to work is the activities. Do you have any idea what I can do to fix it?
Epix Pro 51mm: turned off using light button, kept start button pressed while plugging to macbook and waited until dialog window appeared asking to allow USB accessory to connect, then removed RemoteSW folder. After reboot synced with Garmin Express & iOS Garmin Connect.
Thanks to the wonderful person on Reddit, I didn’t need to do a hard reset: link to reddit.com
Thanks for alerting us, Ray! This really sucks. I can’t even do hard reset with my Epix Gen 2. I have tried the procedure of holding the Start/ Stop and Back button and then releasing them after the beeps. Doesn’t help. Has anybody found a solution for that? At this point, I assume the watch will have to be sent to Garmin?
Here a Fenix 7 standard edition owner. Trying the Fix 3 several times during the day and is not working. My watch is still in endless reboot. (I am not the only one, more people is experiencing the same, according to the forum)
The tip is just to never leave the elevator and you can exists in this weird stasis where you are at all the floors at the same time, in a place where time and GPS signal does not exist. You get to meet few people randomly popping in and out while you try to force restart for 20th time, to get the Garmin to load into main screen without crashing.
The real tip:
When first “Garmin” logo appears without anything else, that’s the moment when you want to hold power button (and I also kept holding start/pause button, not sure if this is needed). Then if you ever see SOME kind of UI (like back button with some “Activity to Share smth” in my case), then stop holding buttons. Now it means some system stuff has loaded just fine, and 99% the EDGE will fully load. Trying to start any GPS activity now will crash it again, hence elevator (faraday cage) can be helpful. If you go outside, then it may just crash (it may case it could be connected with sharing iPhone maps location to Garmin hours before, I think phone kept trying to navigate there).
Settings reset did not help, I had to do the sheningans again, to get to full factory reset. Now Garmin just starts, and I am left with configuring everything again from scratch and connecting all the sensors etc.
How tf is Garmin still letting this happen, no idea. Just place a big try {} catch(error) {} around the whole GPS handling code (lol, I know it’s not that easy).
I can share my experience how to get dead body back to work.
*) connect watch with cable to Garmin express.
*) Power off with holding 30sec light button.
*) Then immediately press start/stop button and hold it for 30 sec. This will bring you opportunity to connect watch to Garmin express
*) Log into Garmin connect account and under watch icon enroll Beta testers program.
*) Refresh watch at Garmin express and upload new Beta version
*) Remove cable and you will have back watch
I was lucky to have seen the thread on Reddit this morning, I turned off bluetooth on my 965 so it never got the gps file that caused so many problems. The watch worked as normal for a run after work. Sounds like I can turn on bluetooth again now but think I’ll wait until tomorrow. Thanks a lot for the explainer.
Thanks to the clear explanation and helpful advice on this page, I managed to restore my 955 to working order with fix #3 (full factory reset). I then spent another 30 mins trying to pair my squeaky-clean watch with my iPhone. This was only possible by deleting the watch from my settings and adding it again. I still have to customize the watch data screens to my preferences but that can wait. Anyhow, it’s panic over for me, but let’s hope Garmin don’t do this again for at least another four years!
Mine was doing this today after I decided to sync a new route on vacation. The route had emoji in the title and I was sort of assuming it was the cause, without knowing this was a much more widespread issue.
Without a PC on my vacation I ended up needing to factory reset my 965 – a fairly major bummer given the settings to go over and sensors to re-pair.
I am sorry DC Rainmaker but absolitely nothing helps with the tips also garmin advices on support.garmin.com it all simply does not work. Maybe someone hacked Garmin
I’ve tried Fix #1 #2 #3 & #4 with zero luck on any…
Tried connecting to a PC with an authentic cable and as the watch just bounces I don’t think the machine has any chance to mount the watch to a drive. Garmin express also will not find the watch.
With zero way to remove the file or restart the watch in any capacity I don’t see how this can be fixed. All I can say is Garmin best replace my watch like for like at some point and given marathon training in full swing that will inevitably take a full hit until they do so… I’m absolutely fuming especially as this is the second time for the same offening file !!
My issue too. Plugging into the computer did nothing – no charge, didn’t show up as a device. Also, mine would not even do a factory reset. Once I finally got through to Garmin phone support I explained this to customer service and we both agreed a software update would not help. They are sending me a replacement. They will tell you they will send it after they receive yours, but if you let them put a charge hold for the cost of the replacement on your credit card they will send you the replacement first and then when they receive yours they will release the hold. But, you have to ask them for that option. Good luck!
Weird. Epix Gen 2 running 20.13 beta. I used the GC mobile app and synced before trying a sports mode with GPS. It took a little longer than normal to lock, but otherwise everything was fine. But when I scrolled to my map page, it suddenly jumped and reoriented, and I find I can no longer set “North Up” as the orientation (it’s still there, just unselectable). I suppose I should go to the Garmin forums and report this.
Two words for Garmin…SAFE MODE. If they can add new features multiple times per year, they can choose a button press sequence that will load the minimal OS and enable USB connection to fix future problems without the factory reset…
Hy
Thx 4 the fixes!
All of the 4 steps unfortunatedly do not work for me. Still looping: fenix 7x
Can not get it connected to my pc. Nothing happens beside bootcycles…no reaction, watch is dead…!
What else…?
Really disappointed!
Thx 4 further help!
Epix Pro… borked Been through all the reset options including Garmin Express and it’s a fancy paperweight now.
Even the unprompted factory reset doesn’t work… I get the beeps in the right place and release the relevant buttons in order but it just stays stuck on the initial Epix Pro splash screen.
Fix 2 did not work on my Fenix 8 and I didn’t want to try fix 3. Instead, I installed Garmin Express on my Mac, connected watch, logged in, performed an initial sync and declined all updates. GPS activities no longer crash.
This is very much like the CrowdStrike corrupt virus definition file causing all those corporate computers with CrowdStrike security and compliance contracts to crash.
It’s a double bug. First the distributed a bad file. Second the parser in the Garmin OS crashes the system when parsing bad input — it shouldn’t do that.
Indeed. Obviously lots to learn here, but certainly a bit of a Swiss-cheese model effect (as it’s known in aviation disasters), where one bug/issue by itself wasn’t a deal killer, but rather the combination of two different ones brought it done.
Garmin Crash: OMG you are a bloody genius, thank you, After Fix 1 did zip, went direct to Fix 4 which worked a treat, although a minor tweak, it may help others to note that I had to hold down the top right START/STOP button on my Epix Pro to get my windows PC to recognise it on USB. Before your article I was half killing my fingers trying to find a button combo that worked. Thank you sooooooo much.
I switched to Polar😄 Meanwhile I got the message from Garmin and reset my Forerunner 955 to factory settings, then it restored all it settings from a backup file. Few things to restore manually. So it’s goot to go, but I’ll give a try to my new Polar Grit X2 Pro😉
I switched to Polar😄 Meanwhile I got the message from Garmin and reset my Forerunner 955 to factory settings, then it restored all it settings from a backup file. Few things to restore manually. So it’s goot to go, but I’ll give a try to my new Polar Grit X2 Pro😉
Followed the fix 4 option Ray added and that has sorted it. Epic Pro 2 – restored some settings but not others so that was a bit of a pain. Now have a new problem. If I connect to Garmin Express on the Mac it crashes Express repeatedly. Yet it works fine when I tried it with my old Fenix 6s. I hate software :-)
Try nuking the background app that always runs. I’d do it from the command line, but you can also search for “Garmin” using Activity Monitor and quit it that way. Then restarting Garmin Express will restart the background process as well. You can also quit it from the triangle icon in the menu bar (it’ll ask if you want to quit the background app as well).
Putting my Software Manager/Project Manager hat on for a bit, I have to wonder if there should be a daily/hourly test run at Garmin of this file (or whenever it changes) that just puts it in a virtual sandbox/Docker that represents each watch model and tries a GPS dependent thing.
@Ray @DC Rainmaker — after performing the soft reset on my Edge 1040, my device would not sync on Garmin Connect (phone). I had to delete the device and re-add it. After adding the device, it now shows as CHINESE in the app even though the language selected on the Edge is English. Photo attached for reference…
Interestingly, only the Edge device shows up in Chinese. My Fenix 8 and Forerunner 965 all show “normal” in English… Tried deleting the device from Connect and re-adding it… Issue still persists :-(
Problem is I don’t understand or read Chinese so I cannot figure out is there is an app seeing in the menu to change the device configuration in Connect… ;-)
Hmm, odd. Well, if it helps, to change the language on a per-device basis from the Gamrin App, it should be:
1) Starting on the page you showed in your photo (with the Edge at the top)
2) Select the last item in the list before the break. That’s ‘System’ in English.
3) Select the very first item in the next list (It’ll be language)
4) English is listed as the 8th item down for me, though, languages should always show in the actual language being selected. Then, select back.
It’s kinda hard to judge right now, because I haven’t called Garmin Support or anything to deal with it.
That, said, focusing purely on the response (as opposed to the underlying bug, I’d say):
1) Initial communication on Garmin.com/support: They were pretty darn quick here. I think within about 2 hours of people starting to report it on the internet, they had banners up on the site with a very initial manual reset (the one I show in my post above). Given this seemed to start at about 4AM Kansas time, that’s pretty reasonable for a big intnl company to absorb international reports, figure out what’s going on, the extent of the problem, and roll-out banners. So, I’d say like 8 out of 10 for first few hours.
2) Next few hours: I think this is where Garmin faltered a bit, and let things fester more than it needed to before they had concrete support pages up with resolutions. That said, I’m getting the impression the various fix options were inconsistent (as I’m seeing myself with various units), thus having to explain 4+ different fix options depending on who-knows-what variables to a wide range of people’s technical skill sets, is messy. Likewise, while Reddit is great at throwing out solutions, sometimes initial solutions can lead people down messier paths. Said differently, it can be best to wait an extra hour or two for the ‘right’ answer, versus the shotgun answer. Still, I’d give them maybe a 5 out of 10, for hours 2-6 or so. But hard to know without knowing everything.
3) From now on: This part is tough, as I haven’t tried to call support or such. But, they have proactively put a notice in the Garmin Connect app, on the website, on social media, e-mails apparently, etc… So I think they’re taking the right steps here. The reality is, the situation is deeply sucky. For a lot of people, the resolution is easy. But for a non-zero number of people, it’s a @#$# to undo, potentially even requiring a computer handy. I imagine it’s an all-hands on deck affair right now at Garmin, trying to answer support tickets. I think Garmin’s support article can probably be a bit deeper right now, for geeks wanting to resolve it. Though realistically, those geeks will find Fix #4 and the like themselves on Reddit/here/etc…
Once the dust settles, I’d like to see them publish a bit of a one-pager with actual details on what happened exactly, and why existing automated check processes didn’t catch it (Garmin receives and generates the files daily from the chipset provider), and how they will address it going forward. One can simply look at Amazon’s outage after-action summaries as a great template for that (link to aws.amazon.com) – I’d love to cover something like that. Admittedly, I’ve got a very deep technical background from working for more than a decade in datacenters at Microsoft, but I’ve long believed that explaining why things were/are the way they are (and owning the mistake), is far better than not.
I think this is where my experience of finding anything is very different. I heard nothing; had no emails (which I would have expected), then only when googling on how to reset found there was an issue from Google News. Went to their Twitter – nothing (though since they have added a post about their Golf app!). Went on Garmin Connect – nothing. Garmin UK – nothing (apart from free shipping over £30 as a banner).
Companies are keen on having every bit of info on you – linking your serials to your [mandatory] account, but here is an instance where that would be useful. Emailing, and flagging in Connect to those with affected devices. Plus a twitter that acknowledges issues and links to the support you found.
I’d be interested in knowing how it all went so wrong (my watch is still unusable). I’m also now interested in which Polar watches are a replacement, as Garmin now have form for me of handling issues terribly. I’d argue the forerunner has had marginal improvements (at best) for years, since the size came down with the 410. Coros have been nibbling away, are Garmin the next Blackberry? Car sat Navs have been replaced by phones/auto software. Fitness and outdoor is over half their revenue. Lose trust and the network effects go in to reverse.
Microsoft are an interesting counterpoint in how they have evolved and stayed relevant. Garmin? We’ll see
I believe they did not know who was affected and who was not. Most of my friends were not affected.
My Epix (Gen 2) Pro went into an instant reboot cycle after I tried to add a glass of water to hydration tracking, so I do not know why it happened to my device. As far as I know, hydration tracking has nothing to do with navigation. I was able to resolve the problem with fix #4 because while I was at work, I could not connect my device to my work laptop, so I had to wait until I got home to connect it to my own laptop.
This morning my Garmin Edge 1040 had an endless reboot. During the endless boot I saw an updating screen, then back to rebooting. Had to force factory reset. Appears my 1040 profiles were reset on my 1040 and Connect. The bizarre part on my Garmin Connect > 1040 is in Chinese and there is no way to change it to English. The Garmin support person said they will send me a beta software to my 1040, but that was this morning and it’s now 7:00pm ET, sigh…
FR955. #1, #2 and #4 don’t work for me. I can’t get the watch to show up as a USB device on the computer. Charging an ancient Suunto. Will need to download the app – I can use this until Garmin has some better advice. Or maybe I’ll just move to a GPS watch ecosystem managed by folks who are more careful than Garmin.
If there are any more tricks to make the USB connection, I’m all ears. Tried what is in Ray’s post, plus following the comment to press/hold the start/stop button while making the USB connection. Nada.
Mac I assume? Have you tried to ensure virtually everything is shut-down app-wise on your Mac, especially in the upper task bar? Bits like webcam, Dropbox, etc… can basically intercept the MTP attempt.
Nope, Windows. I even tried with a Win 10 machine that had never seen Garmin Express. Then I tried a Chromebook. Never escaped the boot loop. Ray, thanks for responding!!
Same here, stuck in the loop DESPITE of ALL 4 fixes. Can not establish the USB connection to Windows PC…because fenix 7x is in the loop regardless of push/ press top right button when connecting
Also the advice of garmin to boot block it and connect it to garmin express does not work…
Epix Pro Gen 2
Got into a boot loop as soon as chose Running (GPS).
Nether fix worked.
Tried hard reset (waiting for two beeps)
Still in the boot loop :(
What’s more frustrating than this issue, is the complete and utter contempt that Garmin shows for its customer base.
Not everyone visits DC Rainmaker, or the Garmin Support forums, and Garmin has an email address, on file, for everyone that has an account, so why not send out a group email.
I pray that the AW Ultra steps up a notch this year, as I’m sick and tired of Garmin’s beta products, and their lack of concern for customers.
If only there was a way to break up this behemoth of a company, to be a sports device company only.
Speaking as a programmer in a prior life, it’s hard to handle every issue that would happen, especially if it’s a foreign data file that has to be digested. Not knowing how large the file is, they might have to process the file through quite a bit of data before it went sideways, and having to check every part of the file adds time. But you can’t assume that the file is good by a simple ‘smell test’. I’m sure Garmin will figure out what went *BOOM* and figure out a way to look at the file better.
But they have never let us down when a flaw has been found, I mean they always figure out a way to fix it. Or work around it. (It does make me wonder who gens that file, and what gut caught in the grinder and ground into the sausage)
Hey these things happens, sucks I had to factory reset my 955 as well and spend some time restoring few options, but hey I guess a good reset every now and then can’t hurt.
Actually you know what, since I’ve gone through all the settings I’ll update the maps while I’m at it:
– update via wifi, instantly fails after connecting, “transfer fail” or something, whatever it’s slow anyway
– garmin express, *ding* there’s an update, want to install it? yes of course!
– updated garmin express, click on device, spinner stuck on “checking for updates”
– go through the whole process of uninstalling garmin express, wipe all the leftover caches and settings and whatever (not joking it’s officially documented link to support.garmin.com), reinstall garmin express
– reinstalled updated garmin express, connect, login, map list, tick the ones to update… apply… downloading… *ding” the application has crashed, check on the watch, one map deleted, the other still outdated
– delete all the maps on the watch, start from fresh, try again update via wifi, starts to work, takes forever, gets to 13%, check the network traffic on the router, traffic from the watch has dropped to zero, transfer is stuck, no luck had to cancel manually
– figure out express crashes after every map, reinstall all the maps one at a time, disconnecting and restarting the watch every time, at least I have maps again
– on the watch map manager the maps still shows up as “update available” but after few restarts some shows as updated, at least they seem to work
But hey, these things happens. Let me check if at least they fixed the GPX waypoint import bug that breaks the “up ahead” feature causing all waypoints to fire at the start of a course, it was reported two years ago after all (link to forums.garmin.com)
course_point (32, type: 5, length: 25 bytes):
distance (4-1-UINT32): 0.00 m (0) <- definitely not 0
name (6-5-STRING): "test"
No they have not. Maybe they just need a bit more time. At least I can enjoy using my fancy watch again.
*beep* *beep*
"Stressful day. Today has been stressful, On days like this, try to take relaxation breaks and make time for some physical activity."
Hello Ray, my edge 1040 is boot looping and is not allowing me to connect to the computer. Basically it tries to power up and then shuts down and then powers up and then shuts down and therefore does not establish connection with the PC. Any suggestions? Thank you
Disregard. It worked! Option 4.
I first updated my forerunner then kept pressing all the buttons on my edge almost for an hour while being connected to the pc, and then… It connected. I went and deleted that file and the edge did a hard reset basically. So maybe updating the forerunner did something because before it wasn’t powering on at all stuck on the boot screen. Thanks Ray!
Yesterday my FR245 couldn’t get GPS Lock, so I started walking activity for about 10 minutes without GPS lock until the end of activity. So no gps data on my walking activity. When I check CPE Status, it says “Missing”, I tried to sync several times via Garmin connect and it still “missing”, I restarted both phone and watch, sync again it still “Missing”. I don’t want hard reset so I just waited. Now I sync again my FR245, thankfully now it says “current” and I can start walking activity with fast lock GPS as usual.
Man none of these steps are working for my Forerunner 955 Solar. Even the hard factory reset on Garmin’s page. PC doesn’t recognize the device is connected at all in any part of the boot loop. My only hope is that when the battery dies then somehow I might get it to work. IDK how long that will take to for it die. If this doesn’t work I sure as heck hope I can get Garmin to replace this. Absolute bullcrap.
I made some progress, but still nothing. I held down both “start/stop” as well as “back” then held down “light/power” to turn the watch on. The watch actually beeped, turn on. But it just stayed on the triangle screen. I try this while plugging into my PC and my PC makes the sound like its connected, but immediately disconnects. And it just keeps connecting then disconnecting.
Got it!! This comment from joel_kn on Reddit in the Garmin sub just saved my day. “Hold down light button for 25 seconds. Verify the watch is off by pushing the back button once. Hold down start and back, then press light to turn on. Continue holding down start and back. Wait for a beep. Release start. Wait for second beep, release back. It’s silly complicated. Good luck!”
A factor reset did not reset my Epix Pro Gen 2 and I too thought it was bricked, however I found another fix on-line which worked. You have to mount your phone to a computer (in my case Windows). To force it to mount, even though the watch appears to be bricked, attach the watch to the computer and press and hold the watch’s start button until it connects. In my case Windows asked what I wanted to do with the device and I checked ‘open files’. I then navigated to the watch directory, ‘Garmin’ and deleted all the files in the folder ‘RemoteSW’. Disconnected the watch and restarted it and it was good to go. Garmin will automatically update the files in RemoteSW with some that actually work :-)
Garmin was a leading sport and health tracker brand.
There are 2 important things to be there: the optical heart rate sensor and the gps sensor and the algorithms behind.
Everything other as 16:9 cinema, youtube, etc. on the watch are unnecessary.
I hope Garmin will learn the lession and produce in the future watches for sports and health, free from the smartwatch features as messages, phone calling and so on.
At least to have “sport and health only” watches.
My enduro 3 crashed while opening the non-GPS “bouldering” sport profile the other day, I didn’t question it, eventually it did what I needed it to do.
It did lose a few steps I’d accrued since the last sync, but I’m not too precious about those.
Thanks for the explainer!
I am a little confused. It seems step two and three involve holding the button until the unit turns off. Why does step 3 have the potential to erase all information whereas step two does not?
> I am a little confused. It seems step two and three involve holding the button until the unit turns off. Why does step 3 have the potential to erase all information whereas step two does not?
I assume you mean fix #2 and fix #3 here.
The difference is fix #3 *also* says this:
> If the watch is still boot looping, then do an unprompted factory reset (steps here).
“(steps here)” is a link to a Garmin support article.
If you follow that link, you will see the unprompted (factory) reset procedure involves holding down three buttons, and it will erase all your data.
Thank you very much for this information. I was one of the millions of frustrated and flustered Garmin customers today. In the process of restoring the watch right now. Hopefully will be successful.
Epix Pro gen 2 still stuck. 3 button does nothing, obviously Connect can’t synch as it says not connected as it is stuck on splash screen. Also I only have the provided usb c cable, and my computer does not have usb c!! Basically I’m stuffed until I buy another cable? Anyway going snowboarding today until Sunday, I’ll use Strava on my phone. Grr 😡
The 735 XT is safe. But the 255 no good. Had it factory reset by a Garmin shop yesterday, including removing of two “corrupt files”. When I got home to NOW go on my morning run, exactly the same happened. The shop now has my watch, awaiting an instruction from head office as to how to proceed, in spite of me offering this article 😐.
Forerunner 255s here. Fix 1, 2 and 4 didnt work.
– was able to connect the device with my windows PC while holding Start (needed to be held the whole time), you could hear the connect beep but it did not show up in explorer (which is usualy does).
– But it could connect to Garmin Express. Sync was working but did not solve the bootloop. Softwareupdate couldnt be done because had the latest already. The tip with join beta didnt work, after activating the sync in GE failed, so I opted out of beta again.
– Fortunately via GE sync a backup was created. (Seems I didnt have one by now)
– Finally tried factory reset which did work, device booted up again. After that connection with PC also worked, could see device in explorer and garmin express.
– Then I installed the backup and rebooted and thank god most of my settings have been restored and it seems to work fine now.
TL;DR: before doing factory reset sync with garmin express and create a backup.
Thank you Ray for all the info. It is still amazing though how basic sw change management principles are “ignored” by Garmin, why to release a corrupted CPE file without even testing it for 24 hours at least? Even more surprisingly, the official distributors in Greece and Cyprus had no idea about the issue and they were just replying “fix will be released in the next few days”. Garmin watches have passed the 1k usd barrier in price, so someone would expect a better support and quality of SW..
Cheers! The CPE files are generated daily, waiting 24hrs doesn’t really work. Of course, putting in place additional checks will work. They added checks after the 2021 mess, but certainly those checks didn’t anticipate this particular variant of a bad file. As with any software company, they’ll add more things to try and catch errors, but no company is perfect.
As for the distributors not knowing, honestly, it’s listed everywhere on the internet, Garmin’s home page, support page, push notification in the Garmin Connect app what to do, etc…
My epix just wont power down at all so none of the steps work. I got it for Christmas from my wife and spent too much time already on it so sending back for a refund now.
No problem with my fenix 7pro. Not yesterday not today.
Maybee also excluded from these issues just like the fact being excluded from ecg and other updates.
GARMIN aint scoring lots of points these days…
Anyway big thanks Ray for all that follow up and being available for keeping us up with the latest info.
Thank you for the fix. had to use #3 though I got into the file structure through a different route. Garmin support couldn’t fix it and recommended not to delete the .bin file. Did so as had no other other when the files “popped” up in a file explorer window :).
The watch has just restored a backup and I’m back!
Garmin Support has updated instructions for the Adventure series watches. I have not been able to test the new instructions, but #1-4 have not worked for me (Epix Pro Gen 2).
I have verified that the new instructions worked for me. I did have to remove the watch from Garmin Connect and phone bluetooth connections. Once that was complete, I re-added the watch and applied the backup. This could have been because I tried the factory reset at least a dozen times.
I followed advice below and removed the CPE.bin file, but even after syncing it is not restored with an updated version. Is having no CPE.bin file going to cause issues down the line or will it reappear eventually?
It’ll flow down eventually. No issues (immediate or long-term), aside from simply taking longer to find GPS.
You can try force-syncing via WiFi or Bluetooth, and I find sometimes force-closing the GCM app and re-opening seems to re-trigger things that may be being held back for whatever reason.
I started a treadmill activity thinking I was safe.
After ending it, immediately triangle and restart.
Upon reboot, I press to save the activity. This caused another triangle and restart.
Upon the 2nd reboot my activity was lost!
Damn you Garmin (shaking fist angrily at cloud)
I would really like to understand what happened here. Luckily I did yesterday’s run early in the morning so I wasn’t affected by the bug but it is my understanding that everybody who received the buggy ephemeris file ran into the boot loop. Irrespective of the model or the firmware.
In theory at least this should be quite easy to figure out whether a given ephemeris data file is benign: Just push it to every watch in circulation and let the watch use it. I do hope this is the way Garmin is doing things – aside from some formal tests regarding e.g. structure and size of the file – so my best guess is that sometime between testing the file and pushing it to customers things went south. Of course that is what we have checksums for but maybe something got lost in the process. Still: If I push a file out to all my customers, I better be very, very, very sure that nothing can go wrong…
An update. FR955. No fix has worked. Today, connected to W10 by USB. Hold down start/stop. Computer makes the ‘connected’ sound. But the device never appears in explorer, so I can’t delete the offending file. When I release start/stop, I get the ‘disconnected’ chime. Reproducible. But never connects far enough to access the file structure. So, off for my run using an FR 305!!! That dinosaur remembered my info, paired immediately to HR and foot pod. Battery will probably expire 1/2 through the run, though.
“That file gets updated on your watch every few days, and generally goes stale within a week. However, if a bad version of the file gets delivered, then chaos can ensue – as we saw a few years ago, when it impacted far more than just Garmin, but also Suunto, Polar, Wahoo, COROS, and others on the Sony chipset at the time.”
After the Crowdstrike debacle of Summer 2024, companies should have learned lessons about the importance of testing and rolling out potentially harmful updates over time. Indeed, this is worse because Crowdstrike exploited European law to create a security weakness (Microsoft was overridden on the risks of giving third parties kernel access); Garmin is a first party and should never release updates that can harm their devices.
I hope they’ll incorporate some measures to avoid perpetual boot loop, such as detecting it is happening and if it is, try clearing up anything that might be causing it, such as a corrupted/broken file.
Everything in software land is muddy and God knows how this works internally but sounds like a sensible approach on paper.
> I hope they’ll incorporate some measures to avoid perpetual boot loop, such as detecting it is happening and if it is, try clearing up anything that might be causing it, such as a corrupted/broken file.
This is a great idea on paper, but it also means they have to account for every possible kind of boot loop.
On really old Forerunners, it was possible to for a 3rd-party CIQ data field to cause a boot loop. In newer Forerunners, if a CIQ data field crashes on startup, it’s automatically removed from the activity and replaced with the Timer field. I’m not saying the latter behaviour is necessarily due to the former type of bug, but either way it’s a step that had to be manually programmed.
In this case, it could very well be that nobody imagined a bad CPE/EPO file could ever cause the watch to reboot. Maybe they can fix this kind of boot loop, but who knows what else could cause a boot loop in the future? e.g. Bad time zone database, corrupt watch settings.
Unfortunately, it’s for unforeseen problems like this that:
– watches have a way to force shutdown (with only a button sequence)
and
– watches have a way to factory reset (with only a button sequence)
To be clear I am absolutely not defending Garmin here, only saying that I can see how this happened, and I don’t think there’s a way to automatically recover from all possible types of future boot loops, as that would require knowing in advance about every possible bug that could cause a reboot. Ofc, if Garmins could auto-recover from all possible types of boot loops, then why not simply prevent spontaneous reboots in the first place?
I do hope that Garmin prevents future CPE-related boot loops, whether it’s by beefing up / implementing file checking, or by auto-deleting the CPE file if it’s detected to cause a spontaneous reboot.
Is there a detailed description of the actual (syntax?) error in the CPE file? One would assume that the event from years ago was enough to create a mandatory CPE file check before release. Obviously not.
Appears that Garmin may have solved the issue. GCM now has an alert indicating resolution for the boot loop/blue triangle of death. This is as of 1 pm Central Time US.
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Thank you Ray for the clear explanation. You have put my mind at rest.
interesting… just yesterday there was no issue and no update AFAIK….
Has Trump imposed a tariff on GPS signals?
Musk switched on the dishwasher together with the microwave. Don’t do that.
Or has he imposed a stop-work order on all Garmin devices? 🤪🤭🤌
Thanks as ever Ray
My Forerunner 965 is stuck in the reboot – crash loop. I get the blue triangle then it crashes again. Holding down the power button as Garmin suggested doesn’t work for me. Ugh, my watch is bricked.
link to reddit.com
Try a forced hard reset. When switched off hold down “start/stop” and “back”. Then power on the watch. After the first beep release “start/stop” , after the second beep release “back”. This should now factory reset the device
Had the same, hard reset worked but no restore from previous settings – the opposite was the case, the backup was gone in GC mobile. Had to set up from scratch. BTW: is there maybe a list of what is stored in which file? I have a backup of the whole Fenix 8 filesystem from some weeks ago, but there is no useful source on what I should restore to ge i.e. my sensor setup back – this ist the most annoying thing besides setting up the activities screens …
My Forerunner 255 shows the blue triangle of death permanently. Doesn’t appear to respond to powering off/restart at all.
Connect it to a computer using Garmin express and restart it while connected
I tried Garmin Express. The watch doesn’t get far enough along in the boot process before crashing again to connect to Garmin Express.
I learned that after shutting it down, connect it to a computer, start the watch with the light button, immediately press/hold the start/stop button for 30 seconds. Then the watch makes a connection with the PC and I was able to browse the files and delete the corrupted file. Now watch is fine again.
Mine is the same! Any joy on repairing yours yet?
A hard reset worked for me (Forerunner 955), following these instructions:
link to support.garmin.com
I was able to re-pair the clock and track a run after this, although GPS was slow to get ready.
Interesting to see that Edges are not affected, different chipset?
Can confirm my edge 1040 is also rebooting
Did a ride starting and suncing my edge 840 around 1030 CET, no issues whatsoever
My Edge 1050 was also in boot-loop
My Edge 1050 is also rebooting.
This fixed the issue for me
link to reddit.com
I was about to start my run when my 955 solar bootlooped, this redditor saved my run, which I was able to complete afterward such reset
Epix pro gen 2 here that keeps on rebooting / just showing the start-up screen. Quite annoying #&ˆ$%*#. Thanks for the clear explanation !
What did you do to clear up the issue?
What about Edge?
My edge 1040 does not seem to be affected.
My watch (255m) was fine this morning but I got notice of the problem on Reddit. Tried to check for an updated and it did found one but it wasn’t a firmware update. I’m still on 21.22.
Anyway, after the watch download the update it immediately crashed when I hit the start button. I hard reseted it, restored the backup that didn’t have the broken file, disabled auto update and through my phone set the gps to gps-only for the running activity.
It’s working fine so far. So it seems I was able to prevent this to happen again.
I have a little different scenario and it always involves navigation.
1) I select an activity, select a course and get gps without a problem. When I start the activity the watch restarts. Do the same thing again and there is no problem. It’s random.
2) I start an activity with a course, and then somewhere mid-run the watch restarts. It does come back in the current activity and course but I have to manually resume. So if you didn’t notice the restart you lose a part of the activity.
I think the issue started after adding the 2 fields map overlay, I removed that now and am testing it that resolves it for me.
I have the same problem. Not a bootloop, but random crashes/ reboots during activities. Apparently there are other users reporting this issue.
link to forums.garmin.com
No issue here in the UK. Is it a regional problem?
My 165 seems to be working, in Sweden.
I’m in the UK and my 265 has crashed, no matter which buttons are pressed its stuck on the blue triangle – I did uplaod a new session today so that may be part of the problem
Ensure the watch is powered off.
You may need to hold LIGHT for up to 30 seconds to turn the watch off.
Press LIGHT to power the watch on.
When the Garmin triangle appears, press and hold START/STOP and BACK.
After the first beep release START/STOP.
After the second beep release the BACK.
This completely reset my 265 but at least I have a working watch!
– Just been for a run and all seems OK for now
I turned to ‘off’ the phone, Wi-Fi connectivity, and the GPS satellites. I was able to still connect to my Tacx for a workout.
Settings -> Connectivity -> Phone
Settings -> Connectivity -> Wi-Fi
Settings -> System -> Satellites
My edge 840 is bootlooping too and does not start, so it does not seem limited to watches
Fine in UK at 13h30 on Fenix 6s Pro.
Haven’t tried Edge 1050 yet.
The forums now say faulty gpe.bin file: link to forums.garmin.com
What if none of the above methods are working (which seems to be my case for Epix Pro Gen 2)? When calling Garmin this morning they said to sit tight and we will get an email with instructions, I’m just feeling a bit pessimistic given even the unprompted reset is doing nothing at all, and I can’t get the watch to come up on a PC or Mac either.
Edge 1040 did the same. Stuck on boot liop. I was able to do a factory reset and that seem to fix the pr9blem for now
People with Edges have been experience boot and course load issues. Here is a banner from the top of Garmin’s EDGE forums:
“We are aware of users who are seeing boot loops or devices being stuck on the Garmin logo when trying to start GPS activities. We understand the impact of this disruption and are currently investigating a cause and will remove this message when a resolution is found.
Thank you all for your patience as we work to resolve this. “
Thanks for this! That’s strange – I get the beta updates and my Epix Pro has been just fine. Did a run an outdoor run a couple of hours ago with no problems.
Forerunner 645 music are perfectly fine fyi
CPE still current? No problem with GPS Lock? Yesterday My FR245 CPE is Missing and can’t get GPS lock at all, but now CPE is current and working normally
At least for me, I was able to get my Epix (Gen 2) to work by switching to a different yet-still-outdoor activity type. (It boot-looped twice on “Trail Run” but then when I switched to “Run”, it worked.) Not sure if it’ll generalize, but maybe worth a shot.
Got my 955 into the blue triangle spiral of doom after reading this, since as a perfect d* I had to try and see what happened.
Had to do a hard reset as posted above to learn to leave well enough alone.
At least I did a full cleanup on the watch after a few years
Happened with my Forerunner 955 about 2 hours ago just as I was starting an interval session. Switched on the workout function and instantly got the blue triangle of death.
I guess it was a good thing that today was gym day. I suppose I’ll fire up the Fenix 5 and hope it works.
Wish I could get my Epix 2 to actually switch off! It will not power down regardless of anybutton pressing combinations – just looping between a blank screen and the EPIX PRO splash screen!
I’ve got a forerunner 955. I followed the instructions listed in ‘fix 2’ to restart my watch, with the intention of then refreshing in garmin connect. The restart has failed – my watch is now in a reboot loop. Prior to rebooting I wasn’t having problems (but hadn’t tried recording a gps activity). I suggest not trying this fix!
My 255 went into a reboot crash loop this morning. When I connected to my computer it didn’t try to charge or even show up as a device. Did a factory restart and then loaded backup from Garmin Connect. This worked until I went to sport menu and selected ‘Run’. Then it went back into a crash loop. Tried to do another factory restart to see if maybe my backup caused the issue but it wouldn’t even factory restart. When I got through to Garmin on the phone after an understandable 40 minute wait considering they are probably slammed, I was told there was a case and they would e-mail me when there is a software fix. To Garmin support’s credit, after I explained it would not power and doesn’t show up as a device on the computer when I connect so a software update would not be possible – Garmin realized the update wouldn’t matter in my case and decided to RMA and send me a replacement. So – kudos to Garmin support for listening. Of course, after all that I then found this article so THANKS DC RAINMAKER for your support to the community.
The “fixes” would be great if the watches could actually, restart, but certainly in the case of Forerunner 255s all watches are simply showing a blue flashing triangle. No amount of holding in the light button gets out of this.
Has Garmin actually confirmed it’s a CPE file issue? I’ve seen nothing to that effect.
“Has Garmin actually confirmed it’s a CPE file issue?”
Yes.
If Fix 1/2 doesn’t fix it, then Garmin confirmed having to full reset is your only option, unfortunately.
Where has this been confirmed? If it’s the post by Stanislav Bures linked to above, he’s not a Garmin employee.
I’d go for Option 3 but I cannot switch the watch off to even begin the process! Any clues on how to shut this down so I can even try Option 3?
And I can’t see anywhere Garmin confirming that this is a fix, the Support website page hasn’t changed from the original message.
Hold the light button in until the screen goes dark for several seconds
Thanks, but the splash screen just pops back up after that and then goes off and on again! I can’t find a way of just shutting the thing completely down!
My 255 was in the crash loop and holding the light/power button down for about 10 seconds turned it off
Hey Ray ;-)
And what if a unprompted reset doesn’t work ? I did it 6 times already…
Check out Step 4 above, to remove the bad CPE file.
Had the same. Tried again and again and after a while in the small second between the triangle showing up the reset was successfull.
It didn’t work when following your procedure. You said to connect to Mac using the light button. When connecting usingthe Start/Stop button per Garmin procedure it works again !
Thank you though (but maybe update the page hihi)
Is there a way to verify the new / safe file is on the watch?
If it doesn’t crash, you’re good.
Eesh. Well thats certainly one way.
Is anyone else stuck in the reboot loop and unable to even got to factory reset? Seems so for my 955
On my 955 I tried again and again and after a while the reset worked. You have to push the button in between the triangle showing up.
Thank you to the lovely folks who’ve commented here, and of course Ray for your in-depth info. I finally experienced the boot loop after having no issues until about 4pm (Ireland)…
Fixed my FR955 by doing the hard reset (light + start/stop + lap -> beeps)
Restored my backup from last week (I’d been scared to do a fresh backup today) – already on 21.22 fw (latest non-beta)
Redownloaded my watch faces – pain to reconfigure but yeah, redownloaded my spotify
Did a normal reboot (off/on) just to be sure it’s okay!
Will be using my old FR935 to run until issue is resolved but thankfully my watch seems like before, holding thumbs it’ll stay alive until a fix is published
@dcrainmaker not sure if it was mentioned here, but after a hard reset you can restore the watch settings from the app (More-Devices-Backup and Restore) and this saves a lot of the suckiness of redefining activities, fields, etc.
Sadly there’s no “Backup and restore” link under Devices, at least not for my 255
You need to go In app… More – Garmin devices – select your watch- *system* – backup and restore
Just got home from work to a upset wife with a bricked FR255. Immediately turned to you and you saved me with this article. I keep my BT& Wifi sync off unless needed, so my 955 is still going. Fingers crossed that the minions find a fix. And that poor minion that caused this will have a tough time.
So I went into systems on the watch and set Statelittes to No GPS. And an hour later when I opened the activity menu I got the boot loop on my 258. So much for that setting.
In terms of making sure you haven’t got the corrupt file if your watch hasn’t crashed, can’t you just delete the GPE file via file explorer and then allow the sync to put a new one in if the old one is no longer on the servers?
Garmin developer are real idiots
My EDGE 1050 with Beta firmware 12.11 was crash cycling this morning too. Holding the power button for 15 secs stopped the loop
Thank you Ray for digging into this and getting information out there to people. You’re certainly going to be able to reach more of us that anyone else, including Garmin.
I have a new Enduro 3 arriving today. From what I read it should be unaffected as it won’t get the corrupted GPS file when I set it up. Fingers crossed!
I have a new Forerunner 965 arriving later and I am hoping the same!
No offense Anthony, but Garmin has an email address for everyone that has an account, and knows which product we have.
If this already happened some years ago maybe they can ask for help to the hackers that ransonwared Garmin back in the day; they already have the data for analysis and probably are way more skilled that Garmin
If this can (and apparently has before) crash devices, why isn’t Garmin validating this file on the server before pushing it down AND why don’t the clients (watches) validate it as well? This is dev 101 stuff.
Are they investigating issues for users where the factory reset does not work ? No indication on the website…
Epix (Gen 2) factory reset just puts it into a re-boot loop as before –
Same here – it’s a very expensive wrist ornament at the moment. This is really poor
Same here with the Fenix 8 51mm. Keeps rebooting, powering down in the middle of ‘loading maps screen’ No beeps when trying to reset!
Garmin have provided an update
link to support.garmin.com
And upon following those instructions to do a factory reset and set up the watch again, during the process of adding the watch to Connect I was offered the option of restoring a backup, which I did. The only customisation I lost was my watch face; everything else such as my Glances and activity data fields are as I’d set them up.
PS this was for a Forerunner 255
Thanks for the detailed explanation, Ray. Unfortunately, my Forerunner 955 is stuck in the endless blue triangle loop. I wasn’t even trying to start an activity; I just wanted to broadcast my heart rate. Now, it looks like I need to do a hard reset, loose all my setting, etc., but it’s kind of challenging to press 3 buttons at the same time, I don’t hear a beep, and I keep ending up back at the blue triangle loop. Argh! Isn’t GPS the core of what Garmin does? Seriously, how do they get it so wrong?
Did they already fix the issue? I’m not seeing it with the forerunner 965
FR955 owner here. Stuck in the blue traingle boot loop. I’m holding off to get home and try the hardwire connection, but I don’t have much confidence. This might be it for me and Garmin. The FR 955 was awesaome when new, but the updates have killed the battery life and caused other smallish issues. Now, I’m forced to hard reset? Sorry…I think that I have a Suunto Spartan Wrist HR (or some such too long name). I’ll try to track that down and charge it up for tomorrow’s run (today’s workout was an indoor bike, so all good there – until I went outside and triggered GPS…). Seriously, Garmin ought to be either willing to pay me by my hourly rate for restoring all my settings, etc. or send me a new device as an upgrade – a FR 965, maybe…(to compensate – and ‘punish’ this awful error). Yes, I’m hot about this…totally preventable with even below standard oversight of the update impact.
Thanks for the info. I had to do a factory reset to get the triangle to disappear, but now my watch buttons aren’t all working (Forerunner 265S). The Light button only offers power off, not controls. Holding up no longer offers to watch faces or alarms; it just offers nothing. The only thing that seems to work is the activities. Do you have any idea what I can do to fix it?
Epix Pro 51mm: turned off using light button, kept start button pressed while plugging to macbook and waited until dialog window appeared asking to allow USB accessory to connect, then removed RemoteSW folder. After reboot synced with Garmin Express & iOS Garmin Connect.
Thanks to the wonderful person on Reddit, I didn’t need to do a hard reset: link to reddit.com
How did you remove the folder on Mac – my watch connects to garmin express but it doesn’t show up as a device to allow me to do anything?
You need to use software that understands MTP. Ray mentions several of them above. I’ve used Android File Transfer and MacDroid.
New Fenix 8 arriving tomorrow – should I just not open the box for a while? 🙃
Thanks for alerting us, Ray! This really sucks. I can’t even do hard reset with my Epix Gen 2. I have tried the procedure of holding the Start/ Stop and Back button and then releasing them after the beeps. Doesn’t help. Has anybody found a solution for that? At this point, I assume the watch will have to be sent to Garmin?
Here a Fenix 7 standard edition owner. Trying the Fix 3 several times during the day and is not working. My watch is still in endless reboot. (I am not the only one, more people is experiencing the same, according to the forum)
In which case, you’ll have to manually remove the file from the RemoteSW folder. I’m adding that to the instructions as a ‘Fix 4’.
Garmin Edge 1050 is also crashing. Factory reset was my only option. Had to do this in elevator lol 😂
Wait, where does your elevator go that it took you had that long?!?
The tip is just to never leave the elevator and you can exists in this weird stasis where you are at all the floors at the same time, in a place where time and GPS signal does not exist. You get to meet few people randomly popping in and out while you try to force restart for 20th time, to get the Garmin to load into main screen without crashing.
The real tip:
When first “Garmin” logo appears without anything else, that’s the moment when you want to hold power button (and I also kept holding start/pause button, not sure if this is needed). Then if you ever see SOME kind of UI (like back button with some “Activity to Share smth” in my case), then stop holding buttons. Now it means some system stuff has loaded just fine, and 99% the EDGE will fully load. Trying to start any GPS activity now will crash it again, hence elevator (faraday cage) can be helpful. If you go outside, then it may just crash (it may case it could be connected with sharing iPhone maps location to Garmin hours before, I think phone kept trying to navigate there).
Settings reset did not help, I had to do the sheningans again, to get to full factory reset. Now Garmin just starts, and I am left with configuring everything again from scratch and connecting all the sensors etc.
How tf is Garmin still letting this happen, no idea. Just place a big try {} catch(error) {} around the whole GPS handling code (lol, I know it’s not that easy).
Hi,
I can share my experience how to get dead body back to work.
*) connect watch with cable to Garmin express.
*) Power off with holding 30sec light button.
*) Then immediately press start/stop button and hold it for 30 sec. This will bring you opportunity to connect watch to Garmin express
*) Log into Garmin connect account and under watch icon enroll Beta testers program.
*) Refresh watch at Garmin express and upload new Beta version
*) Remove cable and you will have back watch
Chears!
My Fenix 7 Pro is still okay but I have automatic updates disabled…maybe that saved me? So far at least…
I was lucky to have seen the thread on Reddit this morning, I turned off bluetooth on my 965 so it never got the gps file that caused so many problems. The watch worked as normal for a run after work. Sounds like I can turn on bluetooth again now but think I’ll wait until tomorrow. Thanks a lot for the explainer.
Thanks to the clear explanation and helpful advice on this page, I managed to restore my 955 to working order with fix #3 (full factory reset). I then spent another 30 mins trying to pair my squeaky-clean watch with my iPhone. This was only possible by deleting the watch from my settings and adding it again. I still have to customize the watch data screens to my preferences but that can wait. Anyhow, it’s panic over for me, but let’s hope Garmin don’t do this again for at least another four years!
Thank you Ray, fix#1 worked perfectly for my FR965.
Fenix 7 Pro in Canada, no issue at 15:00 EST. Starting a run and connecting to satellites with no issue.
Mine was doing this today after I decided to sync a new route on vacation. The route had emoji in the title and I was sort of assuming it was the cause, without knowing this was a much more widespread issue.
Without a PC on my vacation I ended up needing to factory reset my 965 – a fairly major bummer given the settings to go over and sensors to re-pair.
So?
I am sorry DC Rainmaker but absolitely nothing helps with the tips also garmin advices on support.garmin.com it all simply does not work. Maybe someone hacked Garmin
I’ve tried Fix #1 #2 #3 & #4 with zero luck on any…
Tried connecting to a PC with an authentic cable and as the watch just bounces I don’t think the machine has any chance to mount the watch to a drive. Garmin express also will not find the watch.
With zero way to remove the file or restart the watch in any capacity I don’t see how this can be fixed. All I can say is Garmin best replace my watch like for like at some point and given marathon training in full swing that will inevitably take a full hit until they do so… I’m absolutely fuming especially as this is the second time for the same offening file !!
My issue too. Plugging into the computer did nothing – no charge, didn’t show up as a device. Also, mine would not even do a factory reset. Once I finally got through to Garmin phone support I explained this to customer service and we both agreed a software update would not help. They are sending me a replacement. They will tell you they will send it after they receive yours, but if you let them put a charge hold for the cost of the replacement on your credit card they will send you the replacement first and then when they receive yours they will release the hold. But, you have to ask them for that option. Good luck!
Weird. Epix Gen 2 running 20.13 beta. I used the GC mobile app and synced before trying a sports mode with GPS. It took a little longer than normal to lock, but otherwise everything was fine. But when I scrolled to my map page, it suddenly jumped and reoriented, and I find I can no longer set “North Up” as the orientation (it’s still there, just unselectable). I suppose I should go to the Garmin forums and report this.
It has been reported to the Garmin Beta Forums
https://forums.garmin.com/beta-program/fenix-7-series/public-beta-reports/i/public-beta-20-xx/map-orientation-not-followed—switches-tot-track-up-after-seconds
Thank you so much, you saved my day 🙂
For me, fix #2 did the trick.
Two words for Garmin…SAFE MODE. If they can add new features multiple times per year, they can choose a button press sequence that will load the minimal OS and enable USB connection to fix future problems without the factory reset…
Hy
Thx 4 the fixes!
All of the 4 steps unfortunatedly do not work for me. Still looping: fenix 7x
Can not get it connected to my pc. Nothing happens beside bootcycles…no reaction, watch is dead…!
What else…?
Really disappointed!
Thx 4 further help!
Epix Pro… borked Been through all the reset options including Garmin Express and it’s a fancy paperweight now.
Even the unprompted factory reset doesn’t work… I get the beeps in the right place and release the relevant buttons in order but it just stays stuck on the initial Epix Pro splash screen.
Yep this is exactly my issue also. At least I’m not alone!
Fix 2 did not work on my Fenix 8 and I didn’t want to try fix 3. Instead, I installed Garmin Express on my Mac, connected watch, logged in, performed an initial sync and declined all updates. GPS activities no longer crash.
This is very much like the CrowdStrike corrupt virus definition file causing all those corporate computers with CrowdStrike security and compliance contracts to crash.
It’s a double bug. First the distributed a bad file. Second the parser in the Garmin OS crashes the system when parsing bad input — it shouldn’t do that.
Indeed. Obviously lots to learn here, but certainly a bit of a Swiss-cheese model effect (as it’s known in aviation disasters), where one bug/issue by itself wasn’t a deal killer, but rather the combination of two different ones brought it done.
Reference: link to skybrary.aero
Thanks for that link. I work in Anaesthetics, and that resource is the best I’ve ever seen.
Garmin Crash: OMG you are a bloody genius, thank you, After Fix 1 did zip, went direct to Fix 4 which worked a treat, although a minor tweak, it may help others to note that I had to hold down the top right START/STOP button on my Epix Pro to get my windows PC to recognise it on USB. Before your article I was half killing my fingers trying to find a button combo that worked. Thank you sooooooo much.
I switched to Polar😄 Meanwhile I got the message from Garmin and reset my Forerunner 955 to factory settings, then it restored all it settings from a backup file. Few things to restore manually. So it’s goot to go, but I’ll give a try to my new Polar Grit X2 Pro😉
I switched to Polar😄 Meanwhile I got the message from Garmin and reset my Forerunner 955 to factory settings, then it restored all it settings from a backup file. Few things to restore manually. So it’s goot to go, but I’ll give a try to my new Polar Grit X2 Pro😉
Followed the fix 4 option Ray added and that has sorted it. Epic Pro 2 – restored some settings but not others so that was a bit of a pain. Now have a new problem. If I connect to Garmin Express on the Mac it crashes Express repeatedly. Yet it works fine when I tried it with my old Fenix 6s. I hate software :-)
Try nuking the background app that always runs. I’d do it from the command line, but you can also search for “Garmin” using Activity Monitor and quit it that way. Then restarting Garmin Express will restart the background process as well. You can also quit it from the triangle icon in the menu bar (it’ll ask if you want to quit the background app as well).
Putting my Software Manager/Project Manager hat on for a bit, I have to wonder if there should be a daily/hourly test run at Garmin of this file (or whenever it changes) that just puts it in a virtual sandbox/Docker that represents each watch model and tries a GPS dependent thing.
@Ray @DC Rainmaker — after performing the soft reset on my Edge 1040, my device would not sync on Garmin Connect (phone). I had to delete the device and re-add it. After adding the device, it now shows as CHINESE in the app even though the language selected on the Edge is English. Photo attached for reference…
Hmm… That almost looks more like the app itself is somehow set to Chinese, rather than the device. :-/
Thanks for being a DCR supporter!
Apparently the Edge 1040 showing up in Connect in Chinese is an known iOS issue:
link to forums.garmin.com
Completely draining the battery worked for me. Fenix 8. This method has worked before on other models that have frozen up.
Hey folks-
I’ve added some additional troubleshooting tips/steps to ‘Fix 4’, for those that it continues to reboot.
Cheers!
Interestingly, only the Edge device shows up in Chinese. My Fenix 8 and Forerunner 965 all show “normal” in English… Tried deleting the device from Connect and re-adding it… Issue still persists :-(
Problem is I don’t understand or read Chinese so I cannot figure out is there is an app seeing in the menu to change the device configuration in Connect… ;-)
Hmm, odd. Well, if it helps, to change the language on a per-device basis from the Gamrin App, it should be:
1) Starting on the page you showed in your photo (with the Edge at the top)
2) Select the last item in the list before the break. That’s ‘System’ in English.
3) Select the very first item in the next list (It’ll be language)
4) English is listed as the 8th item down for me, though, languages should always show in the actual language being selected. Then, select back.
See if that works.
What would you give Garmin in marks out of 10 for how they’ve handled this (or not, as is the reality)?
It’s kinda hard to judge right now, because I haven’t called Garmin Support or anything to deal with it.
That, said, focusing purely on the response (as opposed to the underlying bug, I’d say):
1) Initial communication on Garmin.com/support: They were pretty darn quick here. I think within about 2 hours of people starting to report it on the internet, they had banners up on the site with a very initial manual reset (the one I show in my post above). Given this seemed to start at about 4AM Kansas time, that’s pretty reasonable for a big intnl company to absorb international reports, figure out what’s going on, the extent of the problem, and roll-out banners. So, I’d say like 8 out of 10 for first few hours.
2) Next few hours: I think this is where Garmin faltered a bit, and let things fester more than it needed to before they had concrete support pages up with resolutions. That said, I’m getting the impression the various fix options were inconsistent (as I’m seeing myself with various units), thus having to explain 4+ different fix options depending on who-knows-what variables to a wide range of people’s technical skill sets, is messy. Likewise, while Reddit is great at throwing out solutions, sometimes initial solutions can lead people down messier paths. Said differently, it can be best to wait an extra hour or two for the ‘right’ answer, versus the shotgun answer. Still, I’d give them maybe a 5 out of 10, for hours 2-6 or so. But hard to know without knowing everything.
3) From now on: This part is tough, as I haven’t tried to call support or such. But, they have proactively put a notice in the Garmin Connect app, on the website, on social media, e-mails apparently, etc… So I think they’re taking the right steps here. The reality is, the situation is deeply sucky. For a lot of people, the resolution is easy. But for a non-zero number of people, it’s a @#$# to undo, potentially even requiring a computer handy. I imagine it’s an all-hands on deck affair right now at Garmin, trying to answer support tickets. I think Garmin’s support article can probably be a bit deeper right now, for geeks wanting to resolve it. Though realistically, those geeks will find Fix #4 and the like themselves on Reddit/here/etc…
Once the dust settles, I’d like to see them publish a bit of a one-pager with actual details on what happened exactly, and why existing automated check processes didn’t catch it (Garmin receives and generates the files daily from the chipset provider), and how they will address it going forward. One can simply look at Amazon’s outage after-action summaries as a great template for that (link to aws.amazon.com) – I’d love to cover something like that. Admittedly, I’ve got a very deep technical background from working for more than a decade in datacenters at Microsoft, but I’ve long believed that explaining why things were/are the way they are (and owning the mistake), is far better than not.
I think this is where my experience of finding anything is very different. I heard nothing; had no emails (which I would have expected), then only when googling on how to reset found there was an issue from Google News. Went to their Twitter – nothing (though since they have added a post about their Golf app!). Went on Garmin Connect – nothing. Garmin UK – nothing (apart from free shipping over £30 as a banner).
Companies are keen on having every bit of info on you – linking your serials to your [mandatory] account, but here is an instance where that would be useful. Emailing, and flagging in Connect to those with affected devices. Plus a twitter that acknowledges issues and links to the support you found.
I’d be interested in knowing how it all went so wrong (my watch is still unusable). I’m also now interested in which Polar watches are a replacement, as Garmin now have form for me of handling issues terribly. I’d argue the forerunner has had marginal improvements (at best) for years, since the size came down with the 410. Coros have been nibbling away, are Garmin the next Blackberry? Car sat Navs have been replaced by phones/auto software. Fitness and outdoor is over half their revenue. Lose trust and the network effects go in to reverse.
Microsoft are an interesting counterpoint in how they have evolved and stayed relevant. Garmin? We’ll see
I believe they did not know who was affected and who was not. Most of my friends were not affected.
My Epix (Gen 2) Pro went into an instant reboot cycle after I tried to add a glass of water to hydration tracking, so I do not know why it happened to my device. As far as I know, hydration tracking has nothing to do with navigation. I was able to resolve the problem with fix #4 because while I was at work, I could not connect my device to my work laptop, so I had to wait until I got home to connect it to my own laptop.
This morning my Garmin Edge 1040 had an endless reboot. During the endless boot I saw an updating screen, then back to rebooting. Had to force factory reset. Appears my 1040 profiles were reset on my 1040 and Connect. The bizarre part on my Garmin Connect > 1040 is in Chinese and there is no way to change it to English. The Garmin support person said they will send me a beta software to my 1040, but that was this morning and it’s now 7:00pm ET, sigh…
this is a know bug — happened to me also. Garmin is investigating. See:
link to forums.garmin.com
FR955. #1, #2 and #4 don’t work for me. I can’t get the watch to show up as a USB device on the computer. Charging an ancient Suunto. Will need to download the app – I can use this until Garmin has some better advice. Or maybe I’ll just move to a GPS watch ecosystem managed by folks who are more careful than Garmin.
If there are any more tricks to make the USB connection, I’m all ears. Tried what is in Ray’s post, plus following the comment to press/hold the start/stop button while making the USB connection. Nada.
Mac I assume? Have you tried to ensure virtually everything is shut-down app-wise on your Mac, especially in the upper task bar? Bits like webcam, Dropbox, etc… can basically intercept the MTP attempt.
Nope, Windows. I even tried with a Win 10 machine that had never seen Garmin Express. Then I tried a Chromebook. Never escaped the boot loop. Ray, thanks for responding!!
Same here, stuck in the loop DESPITE of ALL 4 fixes. Can not establish the USB connection to Windows PC…because fenix 7x is in the loop regardless of push/ press top right button when connecting
Also the advice of garmin to boot block it and connect it to garmin express does not work…
Any news for fenix 8 and loop reboot ? :(
Epix Pro Gen 2
Got into a boot loop as soon as chose Running (GPS).
Nether fix worked.
Tried hard reset (waiting for two beeps)
Still in the boot loop :(
Same here, Epix Pro Gen 2 as well
None of the fixes above work, not even #3
Every time it goes right back into boot loop
Even when I get it to connect and be recognized by Garmin Express, Express crashes. Cannot make this stuff up.
Epix Pro Gen2 here as well. #4 worked for me
I blame Putin.
Fix 3 doesn’t work. 😭
What’s more frustrating than this issue, is the complete and utter contempt that Garmin shows for its customer base.
Not everyone visits DC Rainmaker, or the Garmin Support forums, and Garmin has an email address, on file, for everyone that has an account, so why not send out a group email.
I pray that the AW Ultra steps up a notch this year, as I’m sick and tired of Garmin’s beta products, and their lack of concern for customers.
If only there was a way to break up this behemoth of a company, to be a sports device company only.
Epix Pro 2
I tried all the resets. Tried Garmin Express. nothing worked
I used the Open MTP program and it instantly loaded up the watch and was able to then delete the file. hope that helps someone else.
Does trying all the resets include a Factory Reset?
Speaking as a programmer in a prior life, it’s hard to handle every issue that would happen, especially if it’s a foreign data file that has to be digested. Not knowing how large the file is, they might have to process the file through quite a bit of data before it went sideways, and having to check every part of the file adds time. But you can’t assume that the file is good by a simple ‘smell test’. I’m sure Garmin will figure out what went *BOOM* and figure out a way to look at the file better.
But they have never let us down when a flaw has been found, I mean they always figure out a way to fix it. Or work around it. (It does make me wonder who gens that file, and what gut caught in the grinder and ground into the sausage)
Hey these things happens, sucks I had to factory reset my 955 as well and spend some time restoring few options, but hey I guess a good reset every now and then can’t hurt.
Actually you know what, since I’ve gone through all the settings I’ll update the maps while I’m at it:
– update via wifi, instantly fails after connecting, “transfer fail” or something, whatever it’s slow anyway
– garmin express, *ding* there’s an update, want to install it? yes of course!
– updated garmin express, click on device, spinner stuck on “checking for updates”
– go through the whole process of uninstalling garmin express, wipe all the leftover caches and settings and whatever (not joking it’s officially documented link to support.garmin.com), reinstall garmin express
– reinstalled updated garmin express, connect, login, map list, tick the ones to update… apply… downloading… *ding” the application has crashed, check on the watch, one map deleted, the other still outdated
– delete all the maps on the watch, start from fresh, try again update via wifi, starts to work, takes forever, gets to 13%, check the network traffic on the router, traffic from the watch has dropped to zero, transfer is stuck, no luck had to cancel manually
– figure out express crashes after every map, reinstall all the maps one at a time, disconnecting and restarting the watch every time, at least I have maps again
– on the watch map manager the maps still shows up as “update available” but after few restarts some shows as updated, at least they seem to work
But hey, these things happens. Let me check if at least they fixed the GPX waypoint import bug that breaks the “up ahead” feature causing all waypoints to fire at the start of a course, it was reported two years ago after all (link to forums.garmin.com)
course_point (32, type: 5, length: 25 bytes):
distance (4-1-UINT32): 0.00 m (0) <- definitely not 0
name (6-5-STRING): "test"
No they have not. Maybe they just need a bit more time. At least I can enjoy using my fancy watch again.
*beep* *beep*
"Stressful day. Today has been stressful, On days like this, try to take relaxation breaks and make time for some physical activity."
I must be one of the lucky ones.
I connected my powered down Edge 1050 to my Mac via USB, and started Garmin Express on the Mac.
Garmin Express initiated a sync, and once that was complete, my Edge 1050 starts up normally again.
Hello Ray, my edge 1040 is boot looping and is not allowing me to connect to the computer. Basically it tries to power up and then shuts down and then powers up and then shuts down and therefore does not establish connection with the PC. Any suggestions? Thank you
Disregard. It worked! Option 4.
I first updated my forerunner then kept pressing all the buttons on my edge almost for an hour while being connected to the pc, and then… It connected. I went and deleted that file and the edge did a hard reset basically. So maybe updating the forerunner did something because before it wasn’t powering on at all stuck on the boot screen. Thanks Ray!
Yesterday my FR245 couldn’t get GPS Lock, so I started walking activity for about 10 minutes without GPS lock until the end of activity. So no gps data on my walking activity. When I check CPE Status, it says “Missing”, I tried to sync several times via Garmin connect and it still “missing”, I restarted both phone and watch, sync again it still “Missing”. I don’t want hard reset so I just waited. Now I sync again my FR245, thankfully now it says “current” and I can start walking activity with fast lock GPS as usual.
Man none of these steps are working for my Forerunner 955 Solar. Even the hard factory reset on Garmin’s page. PC doesn’t recognize the device is connected at all in any part of the boot loop. My only hope is that when the battery dies then somehow I might get it to work. IDK how long that will take to for it die. If this doesn’t work I sure as heck hope I can get Garmin to replace this. Absolute bullcrap.
I made some progress, but still nothing. I held down both “start/stop” as well as “back” then held down “light/power” to turn the watch on. The watch actually beeped, turn on. But it just stayed on the triangle screen. I try this while plugging into my PC and my PC makes the sound like its connected, but immediately disconnects. And it just keeps connecting then disconnecting.
Got it!! This comment from joel_kn on Reddit in the Garmin sub just saved my day. “Hold down light button for 25 seconds. Verify the watch is off by pushing the back button once. Hold down start and back, then press light to turn on. Continue holding down start and back. Wait for a beep. Release start. Wait for second beep, release back. It’s silly complicated. Good luck!”
A factor reset did not reset my Epix Pro Gen 2 and I too thought it was bricked, however I found another fix on-line which worked. You have to mount your phone to a computer (in my case Windows). To force it to mount, even though the watch appears to be bricked, attach the watch to the computer and press and hold the watch’s start button until it connects. In my case Windows asked what I wanted to do with the device and I checked ‘open files’. I then navigated to the watch directory, ‘Garmin’ and deleted all the files in the folder ‘RemoteSW’. Disconnected the watch and restarted it and it was good to go. Garmin will automatically update the files in RemoteSW with some that actually work :-)
Garmin was a leading sport and health tracker brand.
There are 2 important things to be there: the optical heart rate sensor and the gps sensor and the algorithms behind.
Everything other as 16:9 cinema, youtube, etc. on the watch are unnecessary.
I hope Garmin will learn the lession and produce in the future watches for sports and health, free from the smartwatch features as messages, phone calling and so on.
At least to have “sport and health only” watches.
No problem with FR965 – never had one.
FW 22.14
Best regards
My enduro 3 crashed while opening the non-GPS “bouldering” sport profile the other day, I didn’t question it, eventually it did what I needed it to do.
It did lose a few steps I’d accrued since the last sync, but I’m not too precious about those.
Thanks for the explainer!
I am a little confused. It seems step two and three involve holding the button until the unit turns off. Why does step 3 have the potential to erase all information whereas step two does not?
> I am a little confused. It seems step two and three involve holding the button until the unit turns off. Why does step 3 have the potential to erase all information whereas step two does not?
I assume you mean fix #2 and fix #3 here.
The difference is fix #3 *also* says this:
> If the watch is still boot looping, then do an unprompted factory reset (steps here).
“(steps here)” is a link to a Garmin support article.
If you follow that link, you will see the unprompted (factory) reset procedure involves holding down three buttons, and it will erase all your data.
Thank you very much for this information. I was one of the millions of frustrated and flustered Garmin customers today. In the process of restoring the watch right now. Hopefully will be successful.
Epix Pro gen 2 still stuck. 3 button does nothing, obviously Connect can’t synch as it says not connected as it is stuck on splash screen. Also I only have the provided usb c cable, and my computer does not have usb c!! Basically I’m stuffed until I buy another cable? Anyway going snowboarding today until Sunday, I’ll use Strava on my phone. Grr 😡
I have same issue I cant power down so none of the reset options work. I only got it at Christmas so sending back and going to use my Suunto again.
Hi, this isn’t the first time with this “file” component. But it affected more brands, with the Sony chipset.
Last time, the GPS positions were completely out of whack (risky if you’re the only means of navigation), and so the stats were completely wrong.
And if you permit, your past article :-)
link to dcrainmaker.com
For once I am glad i still have a fenix 6
The 735 XT is safe. But the 255 no good. Had it factory reset by a Garmin shop yesterday, including removing of two “corrupt files”. When I got home to NOW go on my morning run, exactly the same happened. The shop now has my watch, awaiting an instruction from head office as to how to proceed, in spite of me offering this article 😐.
Thank You Ray…. just bought an new fenix 8 and the problem started. I was not happy until I read your page. Again thank you.
Forerunner 255s here. Fix 1, 2 and 4 didnt work.
– was able to connect the device with my windows PC while holding Start (needed to be held the whole time), you could hear the connect beep but it did not show up in explorer (which is usualy does).
– But it could connect to Garmin Express. Sync was working but did not solve the bootloop. Softwareupdate couldnt be done because had the latest already. The tip with join beta didnt work, after activating the sync in GE failed, so I opted out of beta again.
– Fortunately via GE sync a backup was created. (Seems I didnt have one by now)
– Finally tried factory reset which did work, device booted up again. After that connection with PC also worked, could see device in explorer and garmin express.
– Then I installed the backup and rebooted and thank god most of my settings have been restored and it seems to work fine now.
TL;DR: before doing factory reset sync with garmin express and create a backup.
Thank you Ray for all the info. It is still amazing though how basic sw change management principles are “ignored” by Garmin, why to release a corrupted CPE file without even testing it for 24 hours at least? Even more surprisingly, the official distributors in Greece and Cyprus had no idea about the issue and they were just replying “fix will be released in the next few days”. Garmin watches have passed the 1k usd barrier in price, so someone would expect a better support and quality of SW..
Cheers! The CPE files are generated daily, waiting 24hrs doesn’t really work. Of course, putting in place additional checks will work. They added checks after the 2021 mess, but certainly those checks didn’t anticipate this particular variant of a bad file. As with any software company, they’ll add more things to try and catch errors, but no company is perfect.
As for the distributors not knowing, honestly, it’s listed everywhere on the internet, Garmin’s home page, support page, push notification in the Garmin Connect app what to do, etc…
Dude thank you so much! With Macdroid I was able to connect to my epix gen2 and remove the file. It’s now finally working again.
No other solutions worked for me except this one. 👌
My epix just wont power down at all so none of the steps work. I got it for Christmas from my wife and spent too much time already on it so sending back for a refund now.
No problem with my fenix 7pro. Not yesterday not today.
Maybee also excluded from these issues just like the fact being excluded from ecg and other updates.
GARMIN aint scoring lots of points these days…
Anyway big thanks Ray for all that follow up and being available for keeping us up with the latest info.
Thank you for the fix. had to use #3 though I got into the file structure through a different route. Garmin support couldn’t fix it and recommended not to delete the .bin file. Did so as had no other other when the files “popped” up in a file explorer window :).
The watch has just restored a backup and I’m back!
Thanks again.
Garmin Support has updated instructions for the Adventure series watches. I have not been able to test the new instructions, but #1-4 have not worked for me (Epix Pro Gen 2).
link to support.garmin.com
I have verified that the new instructions worked for me. I did have to remove the watch from Garmin Connect and phone bluetooth connections. Once that was complete, I re-added the watch and applied the backup. This could have been because I tried the factory reset at least a dozen times.
I followed advice below and removed the CPE.bin file, but even after syncing it is not restored with an updated version. Is having no CPE.bin file going to cause issues down the line or will it reappear eventually?
It’ll flow down eventually. No issues (immediate or long-term), aside from simply taking longer to find GPS.
You can try force-syncing via WiFi or Bluetooth, and I find sometimes force-closing the GCM app and re-opening seems to re-trigger things that may be being held back for whatever reason.
I started a treadmill activity thinking I was safe.
After ending it, immediately triangle and restart.
Upon reboot, I press to save the activity. This caused another triangle and restart.
Upon the 2nd reboot my activity was lost!
Damn you Garmin (shaking fist angrily at cloud)
See, life lesson learned: Simply eating ice cream instead of a treadmill is always the better choice.
I would really like to understand what happened here. Luckily I did yesterday’s run early in the morning so I wasn’t affected by the bug but it is my understanding that everybody who received the buggy ephemeris file ran into the boot loop. Irrespective of the model or the firmware.
In theory at least this should be quite easy to figure out whether a given ephemeris data file is benign: Just push it to every watch in circulation and let the watch use it. I do hope this is the way Garmin is doing things – aside from some formal tests regarding e.g. structure and size of the file – so my best guess is that sometime between testing the file and pushing it to customers things went south. Of course that is what we have checksums for but maybe something got lost in the process. Still: If I push a file out to all my customers, I better be very, very, very sure that nothing can go wrong…
An update. FR955. No fix has worked. Today, connected to W10 by USB. Hold down start/stop. Computer makes the ‘connected’ sound. But the device never appears in explorer, so I can’t delete the offending file. When I release start/stop, I get the ‘disconnected’ chime. Reproducible. But never connects far enough to access the file structure. So, off for my run using an FR 305!!! That dinosaur remembered my info, paired immediately to HR and foot pod. Battery will probably expire 1/2 through the run, though.
“That file gets updated on your watch every few days, and generally goes stale within a week. However, if a bad version of the file gets delivered, then chaos can ensue – as we saw a few years ago, when it impacted far more than just Garmin, but also Suunto, Polar, Wahoo, COROS, and others on the Sony chipset at the time.”
After the Crowdstrike debacle of Summer 2024, companies should have learned lessons about the importance of testing and rolling out potentially harmful updates over time. Indeed, this is worse because Crowdstrike exploited European law to create a security weakness (Microsoft was overridden on the risks of giving third parties kernel access); Garmin is a first party and should never release updates that can harm their devices.
I hope they’ll incorporate some measures to avoid perpetual boot loop, such as detecting it is happening and if it is, try clearing up anything that might be causing it, such as a corrupted/broken file.
Everything in software land is muddy and God knows how this works internally but sounds like a sensible approach on paper.
> I hope they’ll incorporate some measures to avoid perpetual boot loop, such as detecting it is happening and if it is, try clearing up anything that might be causing it, such as a corrupted/broken file.
This is a great idea on paper, but it also means they have to account for every possible kind of boot loop.
On really old Forerunners, it was possible to for a 3rd-party CIQ data field to cause a boot loop. In newer Forerunners, if a CIQ data field crashes on startup, it’s automatically removed from the activity and replaced with the Timer field. I’m not saying the latter behaviour is necessarily due to the former type of bug, but either way it’s a step that had to be manually programmed.
In this case, it could very well be that nobody imagined a bad CPE/EPO file could ever cause the watch to reboot. Maybe they can fix this kind of boot loop, but who knows what else could cause a boot loop in the future? e.g. Bad time zone database, corrupt watch settings.
Unfortunately, it’s for unforeseen problems like this that:
– watches have a way to force shutdown (with only a button sequence)
and
– watches have a way to factory reset (with only a button sequence)
To be clear I am absolutely not defending Garmin here, only saying that I can see how this happened, and I don’t think there’s a way to automatically recover from all possible types of future boot loops, as that would require knowing in advance about every possible bug that could cause a reboot. Ofc, if Garmins could auto-recover from all possible types of boot loops, then why not simply prevent spontaneous reboots in the first place?
I do hope that Garmin prevents future CPE-related boot loops, whether it’s by beefing up / implementing file checking, or by auto-deleting the CPE file if it’s detected to cause a spontaneous reboot.
Is there a detailed description of the actual (syntax?) error in the CPE file? One would assume that the event from years ago was enough to create a mandatory CPE file check before release. Obviously not.
Finally the Garmin fix worked, but all watch settings lost pfffffffffffffffffffff
Appears that Garmin may have solved the issue. GCM now has an alert indicating resolution for the boot loop/blue triangle of death. This is as of 1 pm Central Time US.
Well, for Forerunners, the ‘sorted fix’ from Garmin is a factory reset. Maybe all they ca recommend at this point, but a big PITA for loyal customers.
Best reviews on the net even if the level of tech is well beyond me, I am able to follow excellent instructions provided.