Useless TomTom Rider Gripe

Ordered my TomTom Rider through an French internet suppier....very excited even though it arrived a week late. Eventually installed the fiddly mount in a unergonomic position, switched on the GPS and rode off to a mate's house 10 miles away. What a brilliant bit of kit...very impressed with every feature and the screen as my last GPS was in a 2000 BMW which didn't impress me and often sent me in the wrong direction.

I then download the latest (recommended) software version 5.420 and the TTR no longer finds a valid GPS signal rendering the product useless. I subsequently contacted TomTom support centre by phone who informed me I was the first and only person to have experienced this problem (how many times have we heard that tale) talked me through a procedure to save, reformat and update my memory card. No difference.....no valid signal....waste of time!!!!

Am I really the only one to have experienced this?

I've updated

matpp said:

Ordered my TomTom Rider through an French internet suppier....very excited even though it arrived a week late. Eventually installed the fiddly mount in a unergonomic position, switched on the GPS and rode off to a mate's house 10 miles away. What a brilliant bit of kit...very impressed with every feature and the screen as my last GPS was in a 2000 BMW which didn't impress me and often sent me in the wrong direction.

I then download the latest (recommended) software version 5.420 and the TTR no longer finds a valid GPS signal rendering the product useless. I subsequently contacted TomTom support centre by phone who informed me I was the first and only person to have experienced this problem (how many times have we heard that tale) talked me through a procedure to save, reformat and update my memory card. No difference.....no valid signal....waste of time!!!!

Am I really the only one to have experienced this?

Click to expand...

No problems since I updated, gets a signal even in the car when on the rear seat!!

How long did you wait for it to get a position?

If a GPS has been reset, or even worse, gets confused about it's position (for instance by a software upgrade) it may need a really long time to find out where it is. If reception is not perfect or if it is moving we could easily be talking about 20 minutes or more. I once had a unit that simply wouldn't receive any signals at all but after a master reset it found it's position after a while.

I'm not familiar with the Rider but my recommendation regardless of brand would be:
1. Find a place with lots of sky visible to the antenna (not indoors or even close to buildings, under trees or anything like that) and switch the unit on.
2. If there is a status screen showing reception, try to see if it is receiving any signals. If it doesn't do a master reset (or whatever it may be called on the Rider).
3. With the unit switched on, back off and don't touch (seriously) the thing for 30 minutes.

If you're frequently walking up to the unit, leaning over to look at it your body would interrupt reception from part of the sky and thus prolonging the process. Not to mention moving it around...

Good luck!

Did the upgrade, no issues at all here.

Did you take a backup of the SDCard before doing the update? It may be a good idea to revert to the backup, make sure all is working, and then do the upgrade again...

Of course, if you didn't take the backup option when it prompted you to.....

no problem

fitted mine today, and upgraded software. no problem..sorry nick