Garmin Fenix 8 Crash – How to Fix Blue Triangle of Death
Several Garmin Fenix 8 models are still impacted by the corrupted ephemeris file issues that surfaced yesterday. This major bug stops Garmin devices from starting. Solutions are device-specific and thin on the ground. Finally, Garmin has an official solution for Fenix 8, which also works for Lily 2 Active. Here we go, try this 9if it doesn’t work, there are other potential solutions further below)
Official Solution by Garmin for Fenix 8 and Lily 2 Active users:
- Press and hold the power/light button on the device until the watch shuts off. This can take up to 15 seconds.
- Press the power/light button to turn the device back on.
- If the device powers up normally, sync with the Garmin Connect app on your phone or via Garmin Express on a personal computer. This should resolve the issue.
Other Reading: Every Fenix 8 watch face
Other reading: What to expect from Forerunner 975 / 275
Other reading: What to expect from Edge 850 / 550
Fixes and Workarounds
Garmin has acknowledged the issue and is working on a permanent fix. Here’s what you can also try if the solution above doesn’t work for you… note the sections highlighted in red! Do those:
- Sync with the Garmin Connect App
- Open the Garmin Connect app on your phone.
- Navigate to the devices section and manually sync your watch. This action should update the corrupted satellite file.
- Hard Reboot Your Device
- Press and hold the upper-left button on your watch for 30-60 seconds until the screen goes blank and the device restarts. Once it’s back on, perform another sync with Garmin Connect.
- Use Garmin Express on your computer.
- Connect your device to a computer via USB and sync it using Garmin Express. This method can also help refresh the GPS data files.
- Quick Start
- Start a GPS workout very quickly before the watch can acquire satellites. Once the GPS workout runs, proceed outside and let it get a good GPS signal; give it 5 minutes or so. This will update the ephemeris.
- Follow the instructions on “My device will not start” from Garmin.
- While the triangle is visible, press and hold “back.”
- After the beep or triangle disappears, press and hold “start” while still holding “back.”
- After the beep, release “start.”
- When gear with a status bar appears, release “back.”
- Manually delete the affected file
- Go here
/Garmin/RemoteSWand delete thisGPE.bin. Your watch will automatically recreate a new one later. (Rename it to save it if you don’t believe it will be recreated!)
- Go here
- Factory Reset
- You can perform a hard reset to restore your device to factory settings as a last resort. Note that this will erase all settings and data, although some newer models allow for settings restoration during the setup process. Check Garmin support for specific instructions for your model.
- Official Solution by Garmin for Fenix 8 and Lily 2 Active users:
- Press and hold the power/light button on the device until the watch shuts off. This can take up to 15 seconds.
- Press the power/light button to turn the device back on.
- If the device powers up normally, sync with the Garmin Connect app on your phone or via Garmin Express on a personal computer. This should resolve the issue.
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I appear to be one of the lucky ones. My Fenix 7 has had no issues at all. Thank you for highlighting fixes. Thatv will be very helpful if my watch is affected later
My Epic Pro has crashed and is stuck in a startup cycle. Most of the fixes listed here won’t work because they require some watch function in order to carry them out
To fix the blue triangle issue follow this sequence
Power off the watch by holding backlight button till the triangle sequence stops.
Press and hold start/stop button and lap buttons
Whilst holding those in, press the backlight button briefly.
When you hear first bleep, release the start /stop button
When you hear second bleep, release lap button.
Watch will restart.
You will need to remove watch from Garmin connect list, and then reinstall it as if new device.
My 255 got stuck in the loop. Unprompted Reset as per Garmin’s docs brought it back. Sucks setting things up but it’s not the end of the world.
Regardless this stuff should just not happen nowadays. Garmin’s codebases must be a real nightmare.
Just put my watch on charge and got this problem. Spent an hour trying different ways to bring it back to life. Finally had to reset it to factory settings. I was already going to bed and decided to read the news and Google suggested this news))) It would have been better if it had recommended it to me earlier.
That’s it. I was long time Garmin user. Now I am switching to Samsung
Your fix wording is so confusing. You say, “here’s what you can do ..not the sections in red!! Do those.”
Do them? Don’t do them? What??
not not….note!
ty
So, after spending over an hour trying to fix the problem this morning before my speed workout, I finally recorded to running an untimed 3.5 miles and later had followed Garmin’s suggestion to factory reset my watch, which caused me to lose all data back to September of last year, which completely screwed up my stats…would have expected more after purchasing a $350 device….THANKS A LOT GARMIN!
You aren’t syncing the watch after workouts?
Hi, this isn’t the first time with this “file” component. But it affected more brands, with the Sony chipset.
Last time, the GPS positions were completely out of whack (risky if you’re the only means of navigation), and so the stats were completely wrong.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2021/01/accuracy-impacting-devices.html
The only solution that did work with me is not in the list:
*While the triangle is visible, press and hold “back”
*After beeb or triangle disappears, press and hold “start” while still holding “back”
*After beeb, release “start”
*When gear with statusbar appears, release “back”
i’ll add it, thank you
Check out techradar for the latest updates. Info here is lacking.
do you mean a different site? all techradar is doing on Day 2 is listing 3rd party sources of users sharing their understandable frustrations. https://www.techradar.com/health-fitness/live/garmin-down-reports-surface-of-many-garmin-watches-crashing-are-you-affected
dcrainmaker’s article is good and offers his view on the exact technical causes, and the remedies I’ve listed above appear to be the most helpful ones. The problem with the solutoins seems to be that different oens work for different devices.
Many thanks for your articles all along this issue.
It’s important to inform and provide the solution on all support type, because many of us discover the problem by “chance” and not always connected to the information … 🙂