Garmin Restats

Random restarts is usually a fault of the Operation System software. Something in the routing engine is creating a fault. I would suggest you try a software reload, (not the map). You may have to contact Garmin Support for that. Call them, email is useless for something like this.

@GarminGal. Do you use the "Up Ahead" feature when you are using your DriveSmart? A similar problem was reported over on the GPSReview forum by a user of a RV770 which is the same generation of device as your DriveSmart 61. He said he gets random "system crashes" when he is displaying the "Up Ahead" pane while navigating. He called Garmin support and they confirmed the problem. Hopefully they will come up with a firmware update that fixes the problem.

What phranc said.

I had a Montana that did random restarts, or random shut downs. I did many calls with Garmin, many software reloads, and nothing worked. I finally sold the Montana.

Start a ticket with Garmin, keep a log of all events, what the unit was doing when it restarted/shutdown.

Good luck.

I think most restarts are the consequence of a bug in the software interacting with the specific situation at hand. Over the last three Garmin units that I have had the frequency of restarts has varied a great deal.

For my 855 it seemed to happen roughly once every 10 hours of operation, and was quite annoying to me. For my 3970 it was perhaps 1/10 as likely. For my current 3597 it is considerably less likely yet, but has happened at least once.

Of course it is possible that the specific situation at hand includes some bits in memory that you can revise by doing a factory reset or such, but I suspect in the great majority of cases you are just stuck with it.

Worth doing a master reset to see if that cures it. Also do you ever fully shut your Drive down or just put it into sleep mode? If the latter try doing a full shutdown, that may cure it and remove the need for a master reset.

I agree with sussamb. Even though the GPS is crashing and needs to be restarted, do a shut down in good order as a first step. Sometimes my 3597 acts flakey and a shut down and restart does solve the problem.

dobs108

This is similar to a full shut down and reboot on a computer. It just has to be done periodically.

Agreed, and in both the computer and the Garmin that can help some kinds of problems a lot.

But Garmin unrequested restarts are most analogous to Windows blue screens (or, worse yet, Windows involuntary reboots without the blue screen) and I believe generally arise from bugs. Shut down and reboot does not cure any bugs, though it can re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic enough that the bug in question does not come into effect. But there are others. And they will.

Thanks for all the great ideas - very much appreciated!

I was a similar issue with my older Garmin GPS, If it was plugged in, the system would just shut down or reboot while I was driving. This seemed to always happen just when I needed it the most too, just before a turn or something.

It did work when it was not plugged in however but the battery would die real quick. After trying so many things from rebooting, resetting, even changing the plug I found the problem to be the plug area inside the device was messed up and was shorting out the device.

I decided to just get a new one and keep this as a backup and have been happy that I did!

it's a hardware issue probably something getting a bad contact.

It is true that this could be caused by a hardware issue such as the connector on the GPS case. I think a call to Garmin Support should be tried before giving up on the DriveSmart 61.

dobs108

Last software update boogered this thing all up. I see there are a couple people talking about doing a full software reset... Has anybody ever found out how this is done or is it TopSecret info from a factory rep. Ihave a trip from Houston to New Hampshire next week and would like this thing to be working properly...

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/30019

Although your model isn't listed should be the same as the Drive 50/60 series