A friend of mine has a Columbus unit and he asked me for some advice as he knows I have one too.

His unit turned its self off one day and immediately turned back on. Almost like a "re-boot" is how he descibed it.

Everything works and there appears to be no problems but he has noticed he GPS position is slightly "behind".

He says when it first re-booted the GPS was out by miles but pretty quickly it sorted itself out (within a few mins). However he has noticed that the GPS position compared to actual position is now about "5 or 6 car lengths" behind so he would miss the required turning when the nav is in use.

He reports no previous problems and the unit has never done anything like this before.

The only thing I could think of was if the unit had overheated as ive heard they can sometimes re-boot with quite a loud unexpected bang. He says thats not possible as he had only been in the car a short time (10 mins max).

Ive offere to do a scan to see if that brings any error codes up but has anyone any other ideas?

How do you re-set the GPS position? (Is it even possible?)

Thanks in advance

Hi Mate,

It's nothing to worry about. All Columbus have the "5-6 car lengths out" feature, Certainly the 3 i've had have and my latest is an LED Screen version with 3984 Firmware.

I've had a columbus switch off/on as you describe but it only did it once and no faults where shown in VCDS. He could try a firmware upgrade to reset the GPS Alamanc (list of Satellites and rough position in the sky) but he will still have the same "issue" once the Almanac has re-updated which takes up to 30 mins but usually around 10.

The other thing he could do would be to move the GPS antenna (if the unit is not Factory Fit) to somewhere like the dash. I used to have my antenna on the dash coming through the hole where the Aircon sensor sits (or blanking plate if he doesn't have climatronic). I got fantastic signal with that and never had any less than 9 Satellites.

But as i've said i wouldn't worry about it unless it starts doing it repeatedly which then indicates another problem that would need some investigation.

HTH

Carl

Thanks Carl, as always you have "D knowledge".

He says its all working ok and I will do a scan just to double check.

By the sounds of it its just one of those things and the unit decided to re-boot itself for some reason. I will let hiom know the verdict so far and tell him not to worry unless it happens regulary.

I must admit since he asked me about it ive been watching mine like a hawk and I would agree that its not "point" perfect but ive never had a problem when using mine to navigate.

So 3984 is the latest safe firmware? I think i'm on 2760 (actually shows up as 2763). Looks like I need to update my firmware

Thanks again Carl