Lowrance HDS gen 2 touch ( new ) hanging up on start up

[patrol50]

hi had sent up a new hds gen 2 touch from ch smith in melbourne as one of the few stockist with any new units available - arrived promptly and well packaged - but of course due to murphys law i plugged it in and up comes the start up screen hds lowrance and then it just hangs there for say anything from 30 secs up to a minute and half or more - methinks dont think it should do that - and me also thinks i hope i dont have an intermittent problem happening because they are the worst to overcome in high tech electronics - so a check on the net suggest this slow start up issue is not a totally unknown problem with the odd hds gen 2 touch units from time to time - and possibly others on here may have experienced something similar with a hds gen 1 or 2 in the past

so contact navico lowrance and they say try a hard reset and reload the firmware 4.5 and make sure the fuse is 5 amps etc - do all that and no improvement - still hangs up on start up for varying periods of time - but once it finally starts it appears to work ok

so contact ch smith and they say send it back and we will exchange new for new - which they do and the new one arrived today and appears to be ok so far

so to say the least i am pretty impressed with andrew at ch smith marine and the excellent service they provide

cheers rob

[ben_460]

I got a hds 7 gen 2 touch a couple of years back, had a few weird things like what u mentioned above at one stage, I've been doing the updates so I'm guessing one of them fixed it as it doesn't do it anymore.

It powered down/ restarted a couple times hitting big chop banging ( tinny ) , not sure if it was the sounder or a loose connection in my boat wiring but.

once it lost bottom and wouldn't pick it back up in 10m water, goggled how to do a hard restart and it was fine. This is was also early on and hasn't done it since.

The side scan is cool, I've used it to locate lumps and bumps out to the side at scarby reef , mark them as gps way points , drive back over them on sounder and it seems pretty accurate. I've never got the side range like u see in the promo videos and photos, even in fresh water. I have to trim my motor right up to ping port side also.

overall its been really good , enjoy

[Badone]

Had similar problems plus a few other ones with mine. Next time I'll buy a simple chart plotter only and a seperate Furuno sounder. Would not recommend the HDS touch gen2.

[hazza80]

You're happy now, Patrol50? Good to hear yours fixed itself Ben. I'm just about to grab some Lowrance gear - was thinking HDS Gen 3, but for my needs, the Gen 2 touch on clearance sale looks the goods - I reckon there would be a lot of happy users out there that don't bother writing anything.

[ben_460]

I read somewhere to try an inline power filter if your sounder is doing weird stuff also , some brands are more sensitive to irregular or 'dirty ' power apparently

[ben_460]

You're happy now, Patrol50? Good to hear yours fixed itself Ben. I'm just about to grab some Lowrance gear - was thinking HDS Gen 3, but for my needs, the Gen 2 touch on clearance sale looks the goods - I reckon there would be a lot of happy users out there that don't bother writing anything.

You'd be right about that, no one posts every time they go out and the sounder worked normally, only post when your spewing cos it shagged up.

im happy enough with mine for what I use it for

[patrol50]

You're happy now, Patrol50? Good to hear yours fixed itself Ben. I'm just about to grab some Lowrance gear - was thinking HDS Gen 3, but for my needs, the Gen 2 touch on clearance sale looks the goods - I reckon there would be a lot of happy users out there that don't bother writing anything.

yea seem ok hazza in the dry runs but havent put the boat in the water for the last week or two due to christmas stuff and some rewiring and fix ups i am still doing

i found it hard to go past the gen 2 at the price (and especially so if it was a 9 your after as a big price difference ) but hey if you can afford a gen 3 then go with it perhaps for the better faster processor and ther seem to be at least some improvements with the chirp and ss over the gen 2 but maybe not a hugh amount

cheers

[TREVELLY]

Yep I got a HDS12 gen 2 and the first one didn't work (touch screen did not operate) so it was replaced and this one works fine - electronics - would be good if they tested them properly before sending them out.
Good luck with it - hope it serves you well.
These units are very sensitive to good clean power - I ran a dedicated 6mm line from battery to unit not from buzzboard to make it work well.