On Saturday afternoon, I turned on my car and got a very unpleasant surprise: my new GPS stopped working. The device was stuck at the "loading maps" section of the start up. This put me in a foul mood during the day as I attempted to fix it. I tried connecting it to my computer and updating the firmware, but the device was frozen in the boot up screen. I called support but they are closed Fri-Sat-Sun. I checked the website support FAQ and low and behold it is a known issue...
It seems that Garvin attempted to send out an update via the actual satellite connection and it corrupted many units. There was a fix, but you had to get be able to update firmware. My unit wasn't up to that.
I got in touch with support today expecting to have to ship my unit back. It turns out there is a very simple way to reset the frozen USB detection. Here is a step by step set of instructions to repair the 700 or 800 series Garmin Nuvi:
1. If you haven't already, download the Firmware updater here
2. Make sure you have the usb cable that came with the device or a very good one.
3. Make sure the device is off; turn it on with your thumb on the bottom right portion of the touch screen.
4. The unit will ask if you want to wipe all personal data, say yes. The device will turn off.
5. Plug the unit into your PC via the USB cable. It should be detected by your PC as a mass media storage device.
6. Run the firmware update program and follow the prompts.
This should fix your unit.
Pretty simple - not sure why the company website couldn't provide this information.
Let me know if this working for you: "blog at joeylombardi.com"
