Turning engine on/off causes TT to restart + frequent freezing at splash screen

[lanimilbus]

Over the past several months my TomTom GO 920 will often restart itself when I either turn my car's engine off or on and half of the time that it does this it will freeze at the start up splash screen and I'll be forced to pull over, find a paper clip or pin or something, and do a soft reset to get it working again. It used to only occasionally do this but over the past few weeks, upon starting up or turning off the car, it's been doing this about 75% of the time. I thought my car's wiring or electrical system might be at fault since I've had glitches with that too but the TomTom did the same thing when used in a friend's car. It also did the restart-and-then-freeze upon being unplugged from my laptop after a map update (I pressed the "Eject" button in TomTom HOME first), so it's clear that something in the device itself is at fault, I'm just not sure what it is or what to do about it. Any help?

 

[Aiken Drum]

The mini USB plug-in at the bottom of the TT, is it loose? They are known to break at the solder joint on the motherboard, if it wiggles at all it is in the process of coming apart and would be making an intermittent contact.

Just a wild guess.

 

[canderson]

Over the past several months my TomTom GO 920 will often restart itself when I either turn my car's engine off or on

It sounds as though the battery in your 920 isn't being charged or has given up the ghost. If you attempt to power it on without the car charger or computer dock, does it run? For how long? Just moments? When you plug it in to either the car or computer power, does the green light in the lower right illuminate or not?

 

[lanimilbus]

It sounds as though the battery in your 920 isn't being charged or has given up the ghost. If you attempt to power it on without the car charger or computer dock, does it run? For how long? Just moments? When you plug it in to either the car or computer power, does the green light in the lower right illuminate or not?

Sorry for the very late reply, but the green light *does* come on both when it's plugged into the car and when it's plugged into the computer. It does run on its own without being plugged into the car charger or computer, but I haven't tested it to see how long it will last before dying -- after updating to the new map earlier today it froze on the splash screen upon disconnecting it from the computer (typical) and after doing the soft reset the battery showed it was at about 25% power despite having just been plugged into the computer for several hours.

So does this definitely sound like a problem with the battery? While I don't mind paying the $23 for a new battery so much, it does look quite complicated to replace so I'm hesitant to do it unless this is definitely a battery issue that could be resolved by inserting a new one.

 

[canderson]

25% after several hours of charge isn't good (yes, a new battery is in order), but that you have 25% makes me wonder about my earlier diagnosis.

Just for grins, set the configuration of your 920 up to shut down when external power drops. The selection (under Battery saving preferences) is several pages into the menu structure:

Change preferences
r arrow
r arrow
r arrow
r arrow
r arrow
Battery saving preferences
(screen dimming is the 1st screen - just hit Done)
Switch off when external power is lost - select this

I'll be curious to know what your TomTom does in this configuration. I know it may not be ideal for your use of your unit, but I'm wanting to see whether it continues to lock up in response to changes in external power states if it is configured in this way.

 

[lanimilbus]

25% after several hours of charge isn't good (yes, a new battery is in order), but that you have 25% makes me wonder about my earlier diagnosis.

Just for grins, set the configuration of your 920 up to shut down when external power drops. The selection (under Battery saving preferences) is several pages into the menu structure:

Change preferences
r arrow
r arrow
r arrow
r arrow
r arrow
Battery saving preferences
(screen dimming is the 1st screen - just hit Done)
Switch off when external power is lost - select this

I'll be curious to know what your TomTom does in this configuration. I know it may not be ideal for your use of your unit, but I'm wanting to see whether it continues to lock up in response to changes in external power states if it is configured in this way.

First off, after several hours of driving and being plugged into my car I unplugged it and the battery looked to be around 75%. I left it unplugged to see how long it would last and it lasted just under 35 minutes before running completely out of battery. Not sure if that's typical for tomtom batteries or not.

Second, I changed the setting so that it powers itself off when the "external power is lost" and have found that about 50 - 60% of the time this works and it successfully powers off and starts up normally when I turn the engine on again. The rest of the time when the car shuts off it won't go to the powering down screen but instead restart itself and go back to the map and stay on without power. So far since changing that setting there's been one time when it's restarted itself and then frozen on the flash screen requiring a soft reset.

So that auto-power down setting is an improvement since I'm getting less freezing with it, but the problem is still there and the restarting thing happens close to half the time -- it's particularly annoying when I need directions asap and it does this since the reboot process takes like 5 minutes.

Any other ideas on what might be causing this/what I can do to fix it? Thanks again