Maestro 3200 Freezing

I know that I'm supposed to stay on the garmin side of things, but corrupt files do cause this problem.

On my streetpilot I was having this problem, and found that one of the files I loaded had an error. Try and remove all your custom poi's and see if that makes a difference. Then check your files for errors and maybe load them one at a time, testing to make sure it still works right.

Another option is to try and reload the 6 mill again if possible. It could be a couple of bytes and bites are missing or corrupt.

Daniel

I haven't solved the problem yet, but have narrowed it down a bit in the past couple weeks. It seems like the main issue is when the unit is calculating a new route. Usually if I have had the unit off and am driving, when I turn it on it takes a little while to find its location (seems a lot slower than my friend's Magellan, though it is a different model). If I try to plan a route before it determines it's location, it will calculate from where it thinks it is (whereever I last turned it off) and then when it finds the new location it will freeze, requiring a hard reset. The only way I've found to avoid this is to wait until it finds it's location before planning a route, whether its to a POI, home, or an entered address. However, I also noticed today that it froze when I had to deviate from it's route due to a detour. Once it tried to recalculate a route, it froze, just like when it doesn't know where it is initially.

Has anyone else had experiences like this?

I don't know your unit, but it almost sounds like it could be a software glitch. My unit won't calculate until it finds itself. Have you tried upgrading firmware?

Have you tried loading the factory POI? (I hope you backed that file up)

That's my next thing to try, I just have been too lazy to get the GPS out of my car and hook it up to the computer... I'll probably do that sometime today

I switched back the POI, but haven't messed with it enough yet to know if it changed things.

I have one other question though if anyone knows an answer: It seems like my Maestro 3200 takes a long time to find its location anytime I turn it on (often 30 seconds or more) A friend has a Magellan that is a bit older but a higher end model that seems to be able to find its location and recalculate routes in a few seconds max. Has anyone else had similar experience with the 3200 seeming sluggish? Just trying to figure out if this is something with my unit specifically or just a difference in processor or other equipment between models.

A couple of observations from my 4000:

There are 2 "stages" of off. If you tap the off button for only a second or so, just until the screen goes dark, it goes into "standby" which is not really off. From that state, it gets a lock really quickly, I think because it had one all along.

If you hold the power button for 5-6 seconds, the it is really OFF. Restarting from that state is much slower and if you are moving at the time it is REALLY slow.

So my guess: You need to experiment a bit more. Staying stationary during the initial lock may help.

After a bit of testing the last couple days without the modified POIs, the Maestro seems to be working just fine. So, my next question for anyone running the 6mil POI update on a Maestro or anyone else who knows: I had the POI files on an SD card and just redirected the Maestro to look there for POIs. I noticed every once in a while that it showed no POIs when I looked, like it wasn't able to communicate with the card for some reason at that moment. So might it have been the fact that the updates were on a memory card rather than the unit itself that caused these problems? I thought I had read of some people running them off the card and some installing them onto the unit itself, both with success, but just wanted to get a feel for what those of you who have done it successfully are running. I'll probably try to download the files again and repeat, incase they were corrupted somehow.

It's possible that you have a bad or incompatible SD card. Needs to be a "standard" card, no larger than 2G.

Just curious as to why you would be willing to hack the GPS to point to the SD card but NOT willing to just load the new POI file to the internal memory ??
(after saving a copy of the original file).

I don't exactly remember now why I ended up putting the POI file on the SD card instead of the internal memory. I think I remember reading something about some of the Magellan units not having enough memory to put the larger file on, but honestly can't remember if that applied to the 3200 or was even true at all... I assume that for some reason it seemed easier at the time, but I suppose it hasn't worked out to be easier over the long run.

I am running a standard 2Gb SD card, though I guess it could be a fault with the card. Oh well, you do have a point there, rather than trying to figure out why it doesn't work I should just replace the POI file on the unit and being done with it.

You have to use the external SD card because the unit (Magellan Maestro 3200) doesn't have enough internal memory (ca. 7MB on brand new unit) available to support POI file upgrade from 1.3M to 6M.

Regarding the freezing phenomena, I had the same problems as explained in previous posts (the unit used to freeze when starting, or when rerouting, or it didn't have any POI etc.). I found out that it was happening ONLY when unit was powered on through the USB Car Charger. If the On/Off button was used the problem wasn't present. For the last few months I was using only the Power On/Off button as way to start the unit, and after 10-15 seconds I would plug the USB car charger cord in, and haven't had freezing problems anymore.

I hope this will help others having similar problems.