MkIII Sat Nav - killed it trying to upgrade - black screen only -help!
 

Hi all,

I've just bought a secondhand Mini Cooper S so I'm new around here but from what I can see its the place to go for BMW sat nav help. My problem concerns the factory fit sat nav, I had no spoken voice directions, only on-screen directions and tried every setting I could find and none made any difference. However, the radio did drop in volume slightly when a spoken direction should be there, so I suppose its trying.

I gather from reading other satnav posts that I have some sort of software glitch so tried to use the V28 disk image. The settings screen said I had software 3-1/50.

Well, I've tried burning the V28 satnav software disk, installed according to instructions and have managed to kill the sat nav completely. It got as far as "loading software" and then the screen went black and stayed that way. I've managed to eject the disk and left the car overnight but its still only a black screen. The screen does however appear to be on as its quite a "bright black", if you know what I mean, quite distinct from when the ignition is off.

My initial disk burning was on a Mac using "Disk Utility" which should burn standard ISO disks however I do have a copy of Toast in work so I'm going to try burning another disk on a different CD burner and see if that fixes it but any other suggestions are most welcome. I'll try a PC using Alcohol120 also. Is this route likely to work given that I had only a black screen etc?

I'm not sure if I need to disconnect the power to the satnav computer but just in case I might try that too, is it OK to just disconnect the car battery for a few minutes and reconnect or will that break more that its likely to fix?

I killed my MKIII with an attempted upgrade to v27. Same results as you... blank screen. Solution: none! - I had to upgrade to a MK4 unit. Check out ebay: about $800 usd.

Wow! Really? I've been thinking of upgrading my Sat nav OS too but is it really worth the risk considering the little (if any) benefit you get? if it means a dead unit I think not...so there is no way of resuscitating a dead unit, not even by the dealer?

Don't do it!
 

Don't do it! I looked into repairing the unit - not worth it... cost is same as ebay prices.

Try a lower Ver.
 

For a MKIII you only need a Ver.22 to get the max. 3-1/63. I used Ver20 to downgrade and Ver. 24 to upgrade to get rid of the nag screen and have the max. Maybe you can find a factory disk, I did.

Well I found a download link to a V22.1 disk, burned it using Toast on a Mac and stuck it in the drive. Software update worked fine and I now have a functioning satnav again! Took about 4 minutes to complete, haven't checked yet if voice directions are working or not yet but I'm happy to have it alive again.

Thanks to all who offered advice, especially Roy in GA, much appreciated.

Q