Garmin Montana 600 behaving badly

[ShineyDave]

Hi All, my first post on here and i'm looking for some help.

My Garmin Montana has suddenly developed some strange and annoying behavior. I used to just plug it into my PC and i could see both the internal memory and the SD card in Windows explorer (this is Windows 10 BTW). I could then download my tracks and geocaches etc with ease.

On saturday however it seems to have developed a strange fault. Initially i connected to the PC and downloaded the data from my cycle ride and disconnected the Garmin, i then went to reconnect it and found the PC couldn't see it. After trying numerous things i found i could access the Garmin by setting the interface type to Garmin Spanner then shutting it down, removing the battery and memory card and plugging the USB lead in whist holding down the power button until it went into mass storage mode.

I have a nagging feeling this is down to a recent software update as it now has the added feature that once it's connected to the PC i can press the power button and put the Garmin into a mode where it will charge from the USB, something i haven't seen previously.

Has anyone experienced something similar and have you managed to restore normal service as removing batteries and cards and messing with settings is a tad inconvenient.

I have done several hard resets back to factory settings and also removed all Garmin entries from the PC registry and uninstalled all Garmin software then reinstalled webupdater, basecamp and garmin express, i've also tried it on a laptop which exhibits the same behavior so i'm fairly certain it's not the PC.

No idea where i can get an earlier software version from? i'm currently on V7.3 and it would be nice to try to return it to maybe V7.0 to see if that cures it.

Thanks for reading

Dave

 

[Nuvi-Nebie]

Your Montana probably has a diagnostics menu that includes how it connects to a computer, I don't own this unit, so the following is how you would get to this screen on a Nuvi :-

From main screen touch Volume
Touch and hold top right corner of screen
'Diagnostis Page' is displayed
scroll down to Confiuration Settings
Select MPT settings
Select either :- MTP Auto, Mass storage or Mass Storage (Single)

I realise this info. will may be different for your unit, if I find specific instructions for the Montana, I will post them here

EDIT

I found this :-

Connect your Montana to a computer's USB interface
Select the spanner symbol from either the Setup, System or Interface screen
A message saying :-

USB cable detected
would you like to go to mass storage

Select yes

 

[Awaysailing]

Hi Guys,
I am having the same problems on 2 PC's everything had been working fine for years.
I tried the factory reset, the winreg removals and the USB Mass Storage.
The PC cannot see the Montana, but it can see a Virb and multiple other USB devices fine.

Did anybody find a solution ?

Thanks,
Mark

 

[ShineyDave]

Sadly no, the best i could come up with is to remove the battery then hold down the power button on the Dakota until it has powered on into the usb mode, that seems to work as a one time solution. if i try to reconnect it after i've uploaded my workout data the PC can't see it and refuses to see it until after i've loaded another workout onto the garmin.

Whatever has caused this is such an annoyance, it's made the thing barely usable

 

[ShineyDave]

Well i guess i must have had two faulty USB leads. loaded some pics to my external hard drive then straight afterwards used the USB lead to plug my Montana in, surprise surprise, it worked. i've thrown the other two leads in the bin and just use the lead that came with my hard drive now.

 

[kingzcq]

Hello, replace a computer to try, may be the driver software to receive damage to the problem