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I've been having some major issues with my Garmin Edge 500 recently. I did an 80 mile ride in the pissing rain last month and it's not really been right since. The week following the ride the garmin kept turning itself off, it was fine for a couple of weeks, then got wet on a commute home last week and it's been seriously screwed up since.
Issues are:
Intermittently switches off and stays off
Intermittently switches off and turns itself back on
When it does stay on it freezes
It was okay yesterday morning but going home last night and this morning it just kept touring off constantly.
I've done a factory reset but I guess if that doesn't help it's gubbed.
I've had the 500 for about 3 years now and it performs flawlessly [i]until [/i]the number of rides in the activities folder gets beyond a certain point.
Probably due to bad programming (no surprise there with Garmin) the more files you have on there the slower the thing seems to run.
Connect Garmin to your PC, open activities folder and cut all the activities out of there and paste them into a folder on your hard drive.
Garmin will then run as if new...
I've started getting issues with my 500 too.
Mine says battery always full when it can not be after 6 hrs out.
It also switches off randomly.
Googling I did suggested that the battery can move around inside, breaking the connection.
FunkyDunc - MemberMine says battery always full when it can not be after 6 hrs out.
Mine has done this for several years now. I haven't 'charged' it specifically for a very long time, but it's never died on me.
The only charge it gets is when it's plugged into my tablet or laptop to upload rides to Garmin/Strava.
FunkyDunc - MemberGoogling I did suggested that the battery can move around inside, breaking the connection.
I took mine apart to get one of the micro switches replaced (the page/menu button stopped working) & it's pretty tight in there. There isn't a lot of room for movement & the battery is connected to the board via a wire with a small plug on it, so it's unlikely to be a connection issue.
Most of the issues I have had with my Edge 500 (of which there are many) seem to be down to software updates.
Mine won't do breadcrumb trail stuff anymore because of a software update that gave me a load of useless (to me) power meter functionality.
The trail appears on dead straight bits of road, and then as soon as you get within 1/2 a mile of a turn, it will disappear just long enough for you to have no idea where you are going. Then it will conveniently re-appear on the next straight bit of road.....
Connect Garmin to your PC, open activities folder and cut all the activities out of there and paste them into a folder on your hard drive.
Garmin will then run as if new...
I empty the activities folder fairly regularly and I did that on Monday - it didn't run like new.
Even after doing the factory reset yesterday I still had the same issues last night.
I contacted Garmin yesterday so I'll see what their response is, but I reckon it's a lot worse since I did the latest software update.
I can get a 520 from Halfords for £140 with various discounts so I can see me going that way.
http://www.hutsby.net/2013/05/garmin-edge-500-firmware-how-to.html
There's a page here about re-installing previous versions of Edge 500 firmware.
Not tried it myself, but very tempted. Might be worth a look if you get no joy from Garmin (I suspect you won't)...?