GO720 and GO920 cant find satellites

My GO720 usually took 1-2 minutes to find satellites after switching it on. Last Friday it still hadn't found them after an hour or so. I assumed it had died and bought a GO920 which arrived yesterday. I wiped the SD card just in case and did a fresh install of the Euro truck maps. The 920 found satellites straight away. The 720 did not. Feeling vindicated, I used the 920 in earnest today. It worked great - until I switched it off an on again. It then took 25 minutes to find satellites. I had a sneaky feeling that the problem may lie with the truck maps so rebooted to the UK only map. After 5 minutes there was still no signal.

I have concluded that I have two duff Tomtom Go's, somebody is hiding the satellites, or I am missing something. Any advice would be appreciated

whiskychaser wrote:My GO720 usually took 1-2 minutes to find satellites after switching it on. Last Friday it still hadn't found them after an hour or so. I assumed it had died and bought a GO920 which arrived yesterday. I wiped the SD card just in case and did a fresh install of the Euro truck maps. The 920 found satellites straight away. The 720 did not. Feeling vindicated, I used the 920 in earnest today. It worked great - until I switched it off an on again. It then took 25 minutes to find satellites. I had a sneaky feeling that the problem may lie with the truck maps so rebooted to the UK only map. After 5 minutes there was still no signal.

I have concluded that I have two duff Tomtom Go's, somebody is hiding the satellites, or I am missing something. Any advice would be appreciated

Yes you are missing something you are a member since 2012 and I expect that you visiting this site sometimes. But you are lucky start reading Topic.

general-discussions-about-tomtom/the-gps-week-number-rollover-wnro-april-2019-t21159.html

general-discussions-about-tomtom/gps-week-rollover-event-april-2019-t21078.html

I have some catching up to do. Many thanks for the help

I have a 720go. Happened same with me and after uploading no maps worked.
I replaced ttgo.bif, tthome.bif and ttsystem for those I had in my back up and it is back working again.

mindoo wrote:I have a 720go. Happened same with me and after uploading no maps worked.
I replaced ttgo.bif, tthome.bif and ttsystem for those I had in my back up and it is back working again.

I suppose that you have uploading the latest navcore 9.541 and after that the maps not working. After uploading the new navcore you have to patched it and activate the maps again.
You replaced ttgo.bif, tthome.bif and ttsystem has nothing to do with it. So you have done something but nobody nows exactly what.

Until someone wiser comes up with a more elegant solution, the work around I am using is to run GPSfix every week.

whiskychaser wrote:Until someone wiser comes up with a more elegant solution, the work around I am using is to run GPSfix every week.

This seems to work it is from another forum. You can alway,s give it a try

- create a suicide.dat with entry "5" (without the execution characters)
- start the Go x20/30/7000 (satellite detection not required)
- remove the power (if connected) and turn off the Go again.
- Either via the automatic switch-off function or by hand, in
- any case only after removing a connected power supply!
- wait at least the 5 seconds set in suicide.dat
- turn on the Go x20/30/7000 again (it starts after a correct switch off with 00.00)
- and he will find the satellites (about one minute later then also the correct time). Whether with or without GpsFix
files! In the worst case, wait 3-5 minutes.

Now the Go x20/30/7000 should always after these 5 seconds find the satellites
(without any GpsFix).

Thanks to
Alfred_ML

mindoo wrote:I have a 720go. Happened same with me and after uploading no maps worked.
I replaced ttgo.bif, tthome.bif and ttsystem for those I had in my back up and it is back working again.

As Holyhead has already said above, if you upgraded your navcore from 9.510 to 9.541, you should've patched the new navcore (ttsystem file) with FastActivate option 3 otherwise your downloaded maps wouldn't work (as you've already found out).

By replacing the new ttsystem file with the old ttsystem file from your backup, you have now got some 9.541 files with the kernel of the 9.510 navcore...in other words you've upgraded to the new 9.541 navcore and then turned it into a Frankensteined 9.510 again.

Personally I would re-do it properly but if it works and you're happy to leave it like that, then that's up to you

Thanks Holyhead. I thought creating a suicide.dat file and putting the number 5 in it just meant that it would take the GO five seconds to shut down. Not sure how this helps it find satellites again. But if it saves running gpsfix every week, it is well worth that little effort

whiskychaser wrote:Thanks Holyhead. I thought creating a suicide.dat file and putting the number 5 in it just meant that it would take the GO five seconds to shut down. Not sure how this helps it find satellites again. But if it saves running gpsfix every week, it is well worth that little effort

You are right but is seems to help.

Update. Created a suicide.dat file and put '5' inside it. Rebooted as per the instructions and got the confirmation as the time read 0.00. The results were mixed. After 5 minutes, I got two satellites but my location was shown as 200 yards away from my actual position. I also kept losing the only two satellites the GO found. On the plus side, the clock began to show the correct time.

I deleted the suicide.dat file and ran GPSfix again and all is as it should be: Time is correct, I have 5 satellites and my position is spot on.

The suicide.dat fix might work for others. But I will stick with running GPSfix every week. Many thanks for the help

Hi Fredderf,

I went via tom tom website and by imputing device's serial number I was given an option of upgrading or buying a new device with a fake discount.
By upgrading navicore, as you mentioned, no maps were working anymore and I could not patch them even using fastactivate (tried patching navicore first and maps but nothing works out).
So as last resource I replaced the 3 files and, although I had to patch every map again, at least they are all back working again.
So I'll leave as it is for now.