Navigation Initialization Problems

[billygator]

Today I experienced for about the fourth or fifth time the failure of the nav system to initialize upon start-up. It just stays stuck on the "nav starting up" screen. In every case it had started up the next time I used the car, but merely turning the car off and then back on immediately has not worked.

This has happened in three different cities and on both clear and rainy days. I have driven as much as 15-20 minutes with it failing to kick in.

Has anyone else experienced this problem?

 

[enjoyingsilence]

I have not personally experienced this problem... however, sounds like the hard drive may have some issues on boot.

I would advise documenting the issue, and making an appointment at your local dealer. This is something which would be covered under your warranty.

"Technical Explanation"

Likely one of the following occured:

Jarring of the head and/or ceramic platters on the hard drive has caused damage resulting in corruption and or a "rough boot" when the system is being initalialised.

The car does have VERY extensive shock protection (as the navigation is hard drive based, and installed inside of a car, which [likely] will be driven on coarse surfaces), and must be protected.

The hard drive also features a Sudden Motion Sensor which parks the head inside of the hard drive when going over very rough surfaces, to prevent damage to the ceramic platters. Map information is loaded into a small flash based cache, similar to your L2 or L3 cache in your home computer, for fast retrieval while the head is parked.

 

[BaywayRic]

Today I experienced for about the fourth or fifth time the failure of the nav system to initialize upon start-up. It just stays stuck on the "nav starting up" screen. In every case it had started up the next time I used the car, but merely turning the car off and then back on immediately has not worked.

This has happened in three different cities and on both clear and rainy days. I have driven as much as 15-20 minutes with it failing to kick in.

Has anyone else experienced this problem?

I had something similar about a month into ownership. Similar, but unrelated to, the issue over 5 people on here have had with the NAV address book erasing itself. (still an outstanding issue with its own thread) I was was tinkering with [learning] the NAV system functions and managed to have the system 'lock up.' Not unlike the "blue screen of death" in PC land. Even though the system stuck on "nav starting up", the selector still worked. I went to the NAV settings screen and selected "Restore Factory Settings" and that fixed the problem. It never has repeated itself. Everything is working fine. The only caution in this procedure is that it will erase ALL of your NAV settings, including the address book.

 

[enjoyingsilence]

Oy! Excellent idea....

Bear in mind.. IF (BIG IF) the hard drive is physically damaged or corrupted,,, the image used for "Restore to Factory Settings" may be damaged as well... and there is a slight chance that it might not restore properly, or act up down the road..

Food for thought.

 

[blasterguam]

Since it is only 40GB we're talking about I'm surprised this is not a SSD component....I wonder what the reason is for making it platters? Hopefully not just cost. At cost they probably saved less than $100 and could have avoided all the platters-in-motion problems associated with putting precision spinning parts in an automobile. After all, this is not 1995 - or even 2005 - and a spinning hard drive is probably NOT going to last 10 years: Weak link! I can buy a 64 GB SSD "thumb drive" right now, so I don't get it.

 

[enjoyingsilence]

The drive doesn't spin 100% of the time.. it loads what it needs into cache. And refreshes as needed.

 

[musher51]

Since it is only 40GB we're talking about I'm surprised this is not a SSD component....I wonder what the reason is for making it platters? Hopefully not just cost. At cost they probably saved less than $100 and could have avoided all the platters-in-motion problems associated with putting precision spinning parts in an automobile. After all, this is not 1995 - or even 2005 - and a spinning hard drive is probably NOT going to last 10 years: Weak link! I can buy a 64 GB SSD "thumb drive" right now, so I don't get it.

Not only is the cost differential between a HDD and an SSD much higher than you speculated ($200+, a huge consideration for an auto manufacturer from a bill-of-material standpoint), but there are unresolved issues with SSD reliability that offset the risks implicit in a hard drive (e.g. repeated overwrites, etc.). And HDD reliability and robustness have come a long way in recent years, with MTBF ratings approaching 2 million hours. NAND costs will have to drop significantly -- which is generally thought to be 5+ years away -- before SSD will become an obvious choice for this kind of application.

DISCLOSURE: I've been involved in disk drive development for 30+ years, with all the biases that implies...

 

[realpix]

Since it is only 40GB we're talking about I'm surprised this is not a SSD component....I wonder what the reason is for making it platters? Hopefully not just cost. At cost they probably saved less than $100 and could have avoided all the platters-in-motion problems associated with putting precision spinning parts in an automobile. After all, this is not 1995 - or even 2005 - and a spinning hard drive is probably NOT going to last 10 years: Weak link! I can buy a 64 GB SSD "thumb drive" right now, so I don't get it.

I would think the same thing - a HD might has a 8ms reaction time and the flash drive might be a little slower 12 ms but what's 4 ms?

 

[1bad442]

I've been having the exact same problem! When I took delivery of the car, the screen said, "Navigation is STarting up, please wait". The tech in service did something to activate it, it was trouble free for a week, and now it does it intermittently. they say they have to change the entire head unit (warranty of course), but why is this happening?

 

[billygator]

1bad442, where are you located? I have been trying to find a pattern in the intermittant problem. Humidity related? I was told to have the head unit replaced as well, but I was hoping to avoid.

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[1bad442]

I'm in York, Maine, about an hour north of Boston. It's been behaving itself since my last post. Every once in a while, I see the warning for 2-3 seconds and than the map goes on. It does, in fact, say "navigation is starting up, please wait." So I'm OK if it's just for a moment. My problem was that it was getting stuck on for lengthy periods of time. Let me know what you figure out from the data you collect. Thanks, Steve

 

[Calvin]

Sometimes mine starts right up and sometimes I get the start up screen. When I get the start up screen it only takes less than 5 seconds on average.