B&G Zeus3 stuck in reboot loop

[LongRange]

Originally Posted by Alita49DS

I have had, and perennially, still have the same crash error on my Garmin 751xs. Which takes data from Raymarine ST60 instruments.

I do not know about B&G but in the case of Garmin there is a diagnostics page which shows the error. I will start a new thread about that as it is a different unit and therefore might have a different solution.

What is interesting is that both B&G and Garmin appear to use software written in a way that on something such as a PC has been unacceptable for years. Namely, that there is no what is called "sand boxing" of parts of the operating system so that a fault does not result in a complete crash. For something that is meant to be relied upon to the extent that your life might depend on it you might think that this is extraordinary.

A blue screen of death on a PC has not been seen for years, yet on something just as, if not more, expensive, and arguably more important, a black screen of death is OK.

A very interesting discussion.

My guess is that nowadays all of the more capable MFDs are in fact hardened PCs, running a specialised build of a general purpose OS. Even the likes of B&G and Raymarine cannot afford the cost and complexity of developing their own proprietary TCP/IP stack, or their own WiFi, their own windowing routines, file and disk management, thread scheduling and synchronisation, memory management, power management... Together, that stuff is at least a hundred times more technically demanding than drawing bits of coloured chart, and it would not make commercial sense to develop it from scratch. By the time they implemented and debugged all of that software, each individual MFD would cost a million bucks.

So they probably choose an embedded OS, add third-party libraries for marine stuff such as perhaps GPS, the NMEA 2000 protocol, AIS, ... and by then the device is vulnerable to instabilities caused by the inevitable occasional defect in the third-party libraries, if not the base OS.

Troubleshooting at the software layer becomes almost impossible for a marine techie, unless they have a computer science degree or a great deal of personal interest in computers. If they can't get it to work by following a few prescribed steps, it's off to the workshop to get it reimaged or to start ripping out and replacing bits of hardware until it works again.

It was different back in the ST60 days when showing information meant driving a 7-segment display and applying the right voltage to make the wind instrument needle point in a particular direction. I expect the bulk of the instrument was entirely proprietary back then.

[Suijin]

While I have numerous complaints about B&G, their customer service is not one of them. They are really good, the tech guys actually know their stuff. I would call. Most likely they won't even ask or check if your unit is still under warranty.

[LongRange]

Navico agreed to replace the unit under warranty conditions, even though the (two year) warranty had expired two months earlier. I am of course very thankful and relieved. I received the replacement yesterday, and installed it back into the pod. Our boat has a navigation computer again!

The issue was handled through Aegean Electronics, who are the Navico distributors in Greece, and AMZ Yachting in Lavrion. Both companies were professional and helpful.

My understanding is that Navico staff in a lab somewhere will eventually crack open the non-working original. It is still unclear to me whether the problem was hardware or software, but from the end-user perspective that distinction is immaterial.

Thanks everyone for your input and advice.

[Cirion]

My Zeus3 12" got stuck in reboot loop. Unplugged everything, except power, left it for hours, still rebooting. Tryed looking here, but no info. So after a week I took my Zeus to the shop to send it to service, and a guy there asked "Have you tried a master reset?".

I had to wait 45mins for him because he was busy with other customers, and then he could show me... Only to receive a "Oh. I tought is was a Axiom". So he could not help...

But since I already had waitet 45 minutes, I had googled "master reset" "hard reset" and so on, and found that the Triton2 could be hard reset by holding up and down while connecting power.

So I tried that, and it worked! The Zeus3 started with the Wizard asking for language, just like a new one.

[schoonerdog]

Have a Vulcan 9 with same issues, goes to the accept screen for the disclaimer, is completely frozen and constant reboot. Cards removed, all connections removed except power. My unit is around 3 years old so I know I’m deeply screwed for support replacement. My ws320 wind indicator was only in its 15 month and they refused to replace it.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Alita49DS

...A blue screen of death on a PC has not been seen for years, yet on something just as, if not more, expensive, and arguably more important, a black screen of death is OK.

Interesting comment. My new high-end, completely stock, Dell Laptop running Win11 has "blue screen of death" at least once a month.

We have 3-4 laptops in periodic use and none are immune from operating system crashes.

As far as "sandboxing" goes, it appears that no Windows operating system has ever successfully isolated the OS from the applications. I doubt if Apple or Unix OS's do either. Every time some clever programmer comes up with a new feature in which a user or application program can interact directly with OS, for features (like, "Oh cool, let's let the OS automatically run any code it finds in an incoming data packet") for example if imbedded in a graphic image, we start getting exploits.

I was told many years ago that in the mainframe world, "No applications program can take down the operating system" and we found that to be true.

But now the users and the developers are addicted to cool features which allow exploits which can crash the system or perform malware. And so blue screens of death will continue.

[raingolfer]

Originally Posted by LongRange

Navico agreed to replace the unit under warranty conditions, even though the (two year) warranty had expired two months earlier. I am of course very thankful and relieved. I received the replacement yesterday, and installed it back into the pod. Our boat has a navigation computer again!

...

My understanding is that Navico staff in a lab somewhere will eventually crack open the non-working original. It is still unclear to me whether the problem was hardware or software, but from the end-user perspective that distinction is immaterial.

Thanks everyone for your input and advice.

I had a Zeus3 9" that experienced the same issue (wouldn't boot up, kept flashing the B&G logo screen) this past summer.

Called Tech Support, tried the following:
With the power off, Press and hold the √ and X keys while powering ON.
The prompt to select language confirms a reset. The unit is returned to factory settings and all user data is deleted.

Didn't work. Ended up shipping back to Navico with RMA for bench testing. Unit was dead. I had to purchase a new Zeus3S 9" MFD $$$. Purchased new in late 2019, I installed in 2020. So it was past the 2 yr warranty.

[Hermia II]

I had a Zeus2 Glass Helm a few years old that quit servicing one of the screens. Asking B&G to repair I was told it was not possible and had to by a new ditto Zeus3. Coming to Bermuda from the Caribbean I turned it off and when I turned it on it started rebooting. It was not 100% rebooting so after a while i got into it, not knowing what to do.
Turned out there is an up-date patch with the following explanation: On units where the red and yellow power cables are connected together, this can happen so install the patch.
Did so, but it did not work. Cut the yellow cable and started on the start button on the BlackBox unit (supposed to be installed hidden). After many reboots i got into it and called a guy I know at a boat yard (it was a sunday of course). What they did not say in the instructions is that you should 1. Download your settings on a SIM-Card 2. Do a factory Re-set 3. Go to Network -> Sources -> do an Auto select. After that it worked.
BUT Now we are 450NM from Ireland and I was trying to delete some old PredictWind downloads from the Storage menu. Up to the right it says "Transfers" and on that page on the bottom it says "GoFree Sign In"

DON'T TOUCH THAT BUTTON!!!

I did of course, and the unit started re-booting indefinitely. So now the old one eyed Zeus2 is back in service.
Dockhead above referred to an IP-conflict, that sounds probable. As soon as we get to Cork we will try the hard re-boot (Check & X buttons pressed) without internet cables or N2K, and see what happens. These things does not increase our trust in B&G/Navico navigation equipment.
Mats Ohlsson
S/Y Hermia II
Swan 57

[Hermia II]

I tried the re-boot (Check & X buttons pressed) and it worked. I did not lose my pref's. So now happy again!

[Cirion]

My Zeus 2 crashed with at differen reeboot loop.
B&G logo then a messsage "upgrade failed retry update procedure"

Tried to figure out how to hard reset but failed.
I downloaded the latest firmware and put it on a blank SD.
No luck.

In the end I found that you can rename the fw file.

Original name:
Zeus2_W-18.3-61.1.155-Standard-1.upd

New name:
Zeus2_W-18.3-61.1.155-Standard-1.auto.upd

With the "auto" in the name, it booted straight to firmware update, did it and rebootet. I pulled the SD card when I saw the B&G logo again, and it booted back to how it was. No settings lost

[bmclean02]

Both of my Zeus3S 12" plotters went into the hellish reboot loop today. Each day for three days I waited on hold for support. We finally connected. They suggested I download the updated software to an SD card with 32 or fewer GB and then start up each unit one by one with the SD card inserted. It worked. Perfectly. I downloaded the software from the B&G website - the downloads page for my product type. Hope this helps.