Hi all,

I'm currently away on holiday with the car and have very limited internet capability so haven't been able to search properly etc so apologies if this is an often asked question.

Basically on the first day of our holiday on Sunday we got in the car and turned on the ignition to find that the Columbus had set itself to German language. As well as this there is no audio from either the radio, HDD, SD card or satnav instructions. The radio shows as though it is tuned in to a station but nothing can be heard and the same with the media which all shows on the drive but nothing is heard. Also on the maxidot there is no longer any option for navigation or media and the compass direction is missing from the top of the maxidot display. The satnav still works on the Columbus screen but without any voice instructions and as I say everything is in German. If you try and change the language you select auto or English and then just get a message in German saying something like the voice is being installed or fetched and nothing then happens.

I updated the firmware to 4120, (my unit was shown as being ok to run this firmware), just over a year ago and there have been no issues at all up till now.

The limited searching I have been able to do sort of points to a reinstall of the firmware which sometimes works but sometimes doesn't?

Once I get home next weekend will I be able to just reinstall my 4120 CD that I used originally or do I need to do something else with it being the same version of firmware as is already installed?

I'm hoping it's just some file that has got corrupted and the reinstall will cure it rather than it being the HDD our Columbus itself that has gone.

Thanks for any help and I'll keep trying to check online when I can this week.

Have you updated the maps by using the SD card method at any point?

 

Have you tried a soft reset (setup - eject - microphone button all at the same time til it shuts off and reboots)?

No I've never updated the maps via SD. I'm on the latest maps V12 which I updated earlier this year a good few months ago via dual layer DVD which I think was the third map upgrade of done successfully since having the car and haven't had any issues till now.

I've tried a ctrl-alt-delete style soft reboot to no avail as it still boots up all in German etc....

Should a reinstall of 4120 be possible with it already having that firmware installed or do I have to do something else or something different first?

Yeah, just reinstall the same firmware. It might complain a bit and tell you to press a series of buttons to force the firmware though.

Just thought, if you're stuck in German then you'll get a German error message. If the firmware disc flags up a red warning (010304) then leave the disc where it is, and press "Setup - Microphone - Eject" all at the same time. It'll reboot and accept the firmware.

Got back home this afternoon and whilst the mrs got started on the unpacking i re-installed FW 4120. Process completed fine and everything is back to normal. As soon as it loaded the firmware CD the screen was all in English again during the install process etc.... and it installed without any messages or errors. I also didn't have to re-install my maps DVD or load all the media back as everything was still there. The only thing i had to do was set all my radio presets again and change a few options back to how i had them.

 

The only other thing that has changed is the loading screen has reverted back to the original green style screen which i had changed to the current OEM loading screenj. I have tried to change it using the CD i created last year but it won't have it saying the current files are newer than the ones i'm trying to change them to.... So looks like i'll need to burn another loading screen install CD and try again.

All now fully sorted..... I forgot i had to enable firmware downgrade in the hidden settings menu..... Once i had done this it allowed me to update the boot loading screen to the current OEM style one i had changed it to before.

 

I've always just used the HDD for my media (Around 20gb worth....) But i'm now thinking about just buying a 32gb SD card and using that instead to try and prolong the life of the HDD after this possible warning shot across the bows etc....

Sorted.

After suffering the exact same fault with the columbus on my wifes car (a 61 plate). I read and reread all the post available, checked versions etc and decided to upgrade to the 4020 firmware from http://www.rnsfirmware.com/ The philosophy being to upgrade one version at a time just incase it failed and I could not downgrade. I guessed that disk will have a partition set up as 60:35:5 hard disk split downloaded the software. It failed to load first time, but a second attempt worked.

 

On switching on I was happily greated by music from the wireless. I was even more pleased that the change language option worked and we had English. Then when I switched to the hard disk and the music started. I was estatic when the maps came up and the sat nav worked. Phew.

 

It worked for me.

Please help. Audio gone and in German.  Spent 6 hours at Skoda yet problem not fixed.. I followed the link http://www.rnsfirmware.com/,

 

But could not find anything.