My wonderful brother gave me a Magellan SporTrak for Christmas. I'd been using a borrowed Garmin up to then. There are some features of the Magellan I like a lot. One I HATE is that it gets STUCK or FREEZES UP.

Some geoteckies at the last meeting laid hands on it and healed it some. It doesn't lock up as much, but when it does, NOW I have to take the batteries out in order for it to re-set. That's a pain in the butt!

I've contacted Magellan support and they gave me a run around and some things to try. (Not working.) I'm thinking the SporTrak must be a piece of crap or defective.

There is of course one other possibility: operator error. Is it possible *I* am doing something that would cause the equipment to freez up? If so, what? I'm ready to insert this Magellan into some support person's ... temper, temper....need to keep it clean.

Thoughts?
Birdies

***********
Anna

quote:

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Originally posted by birdies:
There are some features of the Magellan I like a lot. One I HATE is that it gets STUCK or FREEZES UP.
Thoughts?
Birdies

***********
Anna

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Birdies, I use a Maggie SportTrak and have been very happy with it.

I had mine Lock-UP several times but found that if I turn off some of the 7 screens, ones I did not need or use very often, that this solved my problem. Seems that with all the screens running and having to refresh all of them it slowed down or Locked the unit.
Hope this works for you too.

Birdies- kennethpruett and I were the techies who semi-de-seizured your SporTrak Basic. One thing I/we noticed was that your unit's firmware was on version 1.02(?) but v1.10 is available from: firmware updates. Sometimes a firmware upgrade will fix problems with a unit. (And other times, it'll cause problems, so it could turn into a cr@p shoot...)

The above advice (upgrading your unit's firmware) assumes that you have at your disposal a GPS-to-PC cable which, I believe, is the only way to make firmware updates. They're pretty inexpensive (~$20), so if you plan to hang on to that unit for a while and don't have such a cable, I'd strongly recommend it. An added bonus is that you can use said cable to upload/download waypoints which speeds up the 'prep-time' required before hitting the road and reduces the chance of 'fat-fingering' coords which could leave you inside a dumpster, wondering if that's really part of the cache hunt.

Trez's idea about disabling unneeded screens sounds like a good, free solution to try first.

Another resource is the two(?) Yahoo groups which cover magellan topics. The members of the groups may have ideas about fixing your ST's problem.

HTH- AndymanD

Here is the link to the Yahoo group Andy mentioned for Sportrak:
Magellan Sportrak Yahoo Group

I've noticed they dont have as many files in their file section as the plain Meridian group: Magellan Meridian Yahoo Group
There are the hidden menus under the Notes section of the files that have helped me a few times on my Meridian. I think most (if not all) apply to the Sportrak as well.
One of the hidden menus resets is what we used to fix your unit at the meeting.

I suggest Trez's idea first and then a firmware update if that doesn't work.
From what I have read in the Yahoo groups, usually sending in a unit to Magellan for checkup/repair will prompt them to update the firmware if there is a newer one out. However, there is probably a cost with sending it in.

Kenneth

Birdie, I had problems with my SporTrak Map too, so I sent it back to Magellan. They re-soldiered the antenna, loaded the latest firmware and included a car mount and Body Glove for free. Try calling and see if you can get a Return Authorization Number. They also over nighted it back to me cause I told them I needed it back in a hurry for a special event.

Good luck,

Tomy