I am taking it for granted that you have got a 16:9 colour screen MkIV navigation system ... factory installed.

1) What you have done so far is the right thing to do, but it is only the first step: you have enabled perspective view through the navigation service mode. Now a "perspective view" choice will be present in the user view menu, alongside "North up" and "heading up" that you had before. You only need to go to the view menu and select perspective view as your choice.

2) At times my nav also takes long to get to the map-navigation screen. In my case this is related to the quality of the backup copy DVD I am using. It would seem the MkIV reader is quite exigent with regards to the quality of the burn it is reading. I guess some times it is a matter of lens alignment or signal strength but some times it is simply the DVD is corrupt, and some files or directories are not correct or missing. I burn a new map DVD almost every week, in order to update speed cameras POI, and I have gone through quite a few of these situations (I use DVD+RW so I can re-use the media). Try your original DVD (if you are currently using a copy) and see if this improves your reading times. If you insist in using a copy (as I do) check the copy against the original for corrupt or missing files. It happens more frequently than you would think.

3) Set a destination on the destination screen, go all the way in setting your destination, until the lady inside issues her first guidance instruction. Then stop guidance and return to map view if not already there. When you exit and re-enter GPS navigation mode you should return to the screen that was active when you left, except if the system went askew and has had trouble reading the map DVD. In this case the system seems to loose the last destination and returns to the destination screen. This issue might therefore be related to issue #2.

4) If you refer to POI icons coming up on the map view this happens only for one category at a time and only after you have gone through the process of selecting a POI in said category. In fact you do not need to go all the way and select a specific POI as destination, but you should go as far as is needed to get the POI list in the screen. You can then select one of them as destination (if that is what you want) or back up all the way to map screen. You will see the map on the screen is now dotted with a series of POI icons depicting the position in the map of all POIs in range, in the category you were listing. This only happens for resolution equal or greater than 5km. If no POIs are shown maybe none are in range.

The BMW nav system is quite moody and not the best for user friendliness. I own the thing for more than two years now and I still discover new “features” from time to time. Do not despair.

Regards

1) You enabled the capability of perspective, but now you actually need to select it from your map view. When you are in the map view, push the navigation knob to bring up the map menu. Then select Map View (I think-- I can not remember), and you should see the choices like "Travel Direction," "Pointing North," and "Perspective." Select Perspective.

2) It sounds like you have a bad map disk. Switch to an original, authentic Navteq map disk. The MKIV is extremely sensitive to map disk copies. DVD copies will often cause the MKIV to lockup or be slow.

3) The GPS-Navigation menu selection will usually take me directly to the map view, but it depends on what I was doing previously. If I had the map view up, and then select something like DSP or Telephone from the main menu. The next time I select GPS-Navigation, it will go back to map view.

4) I am not sure I understand this question. When you do a PoI search, it will return a list of matching PoIs sorted by the nearest first. Then, you just click on the one you are interested to select it, and go from there.

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SOLD
2000 E38 750iL Highline Edition, Upgraded with the lastest 2006 X5 Electronics
MKIV Navigation, 16:9 Display, Bluetooth, TV/Video with Backup Camera, Sirius, and Aux Input

Alright, thanks for the help so far, helps alot. My only question now is still about the load time for the GPS. The map disk I use is the original disk, not a copy. So could it just be a dirty lense then?

Well, if you are using your original BMW map DVD, then I’m taken aback.

I guess a long time to load means more than four or five minutes at least, or not loading at all on occasions. If that is the case it could certainly be a dirty or misaligned lens or a dirty or scratched disk. I would try to read the DVD in my computer. In fact I would try to protect my investment saving an ISO image to hard disk and making a backup copy. A copy may perform better, in spite of all said above, if your original is really that bad.

If the DVD is new or you are still under any sort of warranty I would run to the dealer with the problem. If no warranty then I would keep well away from dealers, unless you know a very honest and skilled one. Try cleaning the lens or try a different map DVD, outdated, if needed be (should make no difference). Try upgrading your software as soon as a newer release is available (you can not reload the same release and downgrading has secondary effects you may not want). Try disconnecting the battery for about 15 or 30 minutes, to ensure a system reset. None of this is guaranteed to sort your problem out, but then the system is moody, as I said, and your problem may go away without you ever knowing why.

Regards and good luck.

Hi has anyone tryed cleaning the sat nav lens with DVD with brushes on it, the type you can get from the computor store, and if so was it successful