TomTom 910 won't turn on

[John_B]

In the past few years my TomTom 910 (passed on from my brother) would now and then lock up, and refuse to come back to life until it was reset with the reset button.

A few days ago, this happened again, but now I can't get the TomTom to switch on again.

I've charged the unit in the dock overnight (the power LED comes on), and then tried the reset button and power button in all kinds of combinations.

The current status is that the power LED comes on if I hold the power button down, but the unit appears to make no other attempt to turn on.

I've followed the disassembly guide, after reading that disconnecting the battery and reconnecting the battery might help, but it doesn't appear to have helped at all.

Before the recent troubles the unit would hold charge fairly well (at least 4 hours), so I don't think it's the battery charge at fault.

Have you got any ideas about what else I could try? (Other than buying a new TomTom/Garmin)

Cheers,

John.

 

[mvl]

Do you hear a clicking sound? Perhaps the internal hard drive has worn out.

 

[John_B]

Do you hear a clicking sound? Perhaps the internal hard drive has worn out.

I've held it to my ear as I try to turn it on and not heard any sound at all. Is that suggestive that the hard disc is kaput?

 

[mvl]

The hard drive is a fat file system, if I remember properly.

Since you know how to disassemble it, you could get one of those hard drive to USB cables and just plug the drive into a computer. Run a disk check with surface scan and you'll know if the drive's the issue.

Hopefully others can chime in as to the normal HDD sound of a 910. Drives were loud back in 2006, I'd assume you'd hear it. But I never had a 910 so I don't know.