My 205 is letting me down

Has anything else changed - such as where you mount it, a new car or anything? Have you connected to Web Updater and made certain you have the latest software for the unit?

You don't provide a lot of information before you reached a conclusion the unit was not seeing satellites.

There is all kinds of chatter on other forum sites about the 2X5 Nuvi's suddenly dropping satellite lock or not being able to obtain lock at all. No one seems to have any idea of what is causing the problem or how to fix it, including Garmin to this point.

I did indeed state I have all the updates..its been in the same place for the last year. The car next to me gets 8 satellites,,I get 2..so I guess its the faulty diode in the antenna that Ive read about.

Looks like a fix may well be on the way from Garmin. Just picked this up from GPSpassion:

Garmin will be posting a FAQ about the 205/255/265's drifting, lack of working HotFix, and poor satellite reception/loss of satellite reception soon, along with a firmware fix. They CANNOT RMA any of these units for this right now.

Unfortunately they can't provide a date for the fix to be available yet.

Work from Garmin is that the firmware update to fix the satellite lock problems with the 2x5 model Nuvi's will be available through Webupdater within the next 24 hours.

For the last two days I have had problems with satellite reception. I haven't had problems with my Nuvi 265 until now. Is this some sort of time out with the software or some component?

Just downloaded from webupdater 5.70 for the 265.

Edit.
Changes made from version 5.30 to 5.70:
Fixed an issue which could cause some GPI files to not work correctly.
Fixed an issue that could cause the unit to freeze at some safety camera locations.
Fixed an issue with some overlapping maps not working correctly.

Use webupdater to update the firmware on your 265 to version 5.70 which was released this morning specifically to deal with this issue.

I updated. It seems to work OK.

Going into work this morning I smiled to myself seeing that my unit was receiving 10 satellites along with an accuracy between 9 and 12 feet at all times.

It's always worked perfectly so why would I ever perform an upgrade? Hopefully all I'll ever update will be the maps.

Have a nice weekend everyone

I did the dl and seems to have straighten things out for now..Garmin did offer to take it back and issue me a new unit,,will hold on to this awhile and see how it works

About a week after I got my 265T it gave me a similar problem. I did finally register and updated the firmware at that time but really did not put the two action together.

But as others have been saying mine has also started to do the same. I will be updating and hopefully be back in business.

As for updating firmware as mentioned by another user. When the software for the satellites get changed it may not always be compatible with the software on our GPS"S. Which in this case seems to be what is happening. I run into this a lot in my business.

Just went on a 40-50 mile city traffic trip and maintained great signal strength after doing the update.

So is that what happens..they change the satellite software and that affects our receivers?

As an example I work on Konicaminolta and Savin/Ricoh line of copiers. They both have a web interface to access the parameters on the copier from a PC. On several occasion Microsoft did a .NET update to Internet Explorer and we could no longer login to the copier. Firefos and Safari worked fine since they do not use .NET. Update the firmware on the copier and everything works again.

Granted two completely different pieces of electronics but similar problem and fix.

I thought since the sats only send out a ping it wouldnt really affect a GPS receiver

It's still a signal that has to be translated. I'm not saying this is the case but it makes some sense to me.

Or take these game boxes and cable boxes a lot of us have. If they are connected to the internet they will occasionally go out and get updated. Some new DVD players can do this also.

No matter how it works I'm getting better accuracy then I have had in a long time.

If it can be fixed with a software/firmware change by Garmin then it is not a hardware problem. Garmin really needs to improve their software quality control. They should have caught these problems in house before they even release new software upgrades. Customer confidence will certainly decay if they continue on this path.

I did the update and now there are only three satellites with 144 to 205 foot accuracy

What have I done?

It maybe what you haven't done. It is always wise to do a 'Hard Reset' after a firmware update to be sure it has 'taken' and that the device is operating properly.

How can one tell what software version they are using?

It doesn't make any sense that these units need a firmware update because the satellites have changed when all the other models are not affected.

Go to Tools - Settings - System - About

I have a friend who is also having trouble with his Garmin, I hope this doesn't indicate a lack of quality!

THis is a stupid question but I do not know the answer. I also have a 205, where do I find the screen that shows satelite reception, ie how many I am connected to, streangth, etc... I have seen screengrabs of this screen but have never found it on my unit. Maybe I am just overlooking the obvious and this will be a forehead slap moment.

It's not a stupid question, it's a very good question.

The constellation info is one of the "Easter Eggs" that people find poking around. Press and hold the satellite signal strength indicator for about 10 seconds. When you release it the information will show.

I would press that icon all the time, just not for that long. THanks.

This sort of thing has happened much to often in the past.

I've noticed over the past several weeks that it takes my 255W longer to acquire satellites when I turn it on. I haven't installed any updates lately though.

Since Ive done the update a few days ago its back to working flawless..hope it stays that way