The flexible stainless (?) pads that serve as battery contacts sometimes break. Many people report that Garmin has repaired this at no charge even if the units are out of warranty.

There have some reports of units not really being waterproof. The reality is that once water is inside it, it's probably toast. Success in getting this fixed out of warranty seems to be mixed.

Hold the ENTER key while powering up with POWER. Hold both until the test screen appears. That screen lets you test each button. Press each key, one at a time, to see if it's recognized. If your key isn't recognized here, it probably needs a field trip to the Garmin service center.

This is great fun to find if you have your device muted. You won't hear the beeps, but the unit doesn't actually shut down. Your only sign that this happend is that the batteries will likely be dead when you next go to use the GPS.

This family of products contains a defect in the shutodown code that seems to be intermittently triggerd by mounting the product or its SD card on a Mac or Linux system. The presence of files starting with a dot on the GPS seems to cause it to crash when shutting down.

You usually can't delete these from within the GUI tools like Finder. CleanEject is free software that will erase those files before ejecting the volume on Mac. Or you can do it from a shell prompot. On Mac, open Applications->Utilities->Terminal. cd /Volume/[name of your disk as it appears in Finder then type rm -fr .Spotlight-V100 .fseventsd .Trashes to remove the files. cd / and eject the volume. On Linux, the filenames and commands to remove them are similar.

There are mixed reports of this being fixed in some models in late 2009 vintage firmware.

The "tic tac" that you touch on these isn't actually the power button. Under that rubber is a long plastic rod that goes to the switch itself. Over time and pressure, that rod compresses and it doesn't fully push the actual button.

Some hobbyists report that a strategically located drop of glue is helpful. If your unit is still under warranty or if screwdrivers scare you, see "Repair" on this page.

Garmin stands behind even their discontinued products very well. We've seen many reports of them repairing units with known problems well after the warranty has expired at no charge. Obviously, your mileage may vary on that. Even if you can't sweet talk them into that, they do have a flat-rate repair system.

The exact price varies from model to model, of course, but they'll send you a factory refurbished unit when they receive yours. They report they'll honor the flat rate on units run over by cars or otherwise clearly damaged. All cosmetic issues like scuffs and scratches are addressed and the replacement is covered by a 90 day warranty. It will be a different unit than you send in, so be prepared to contact them to swap activation codes on any locked mapping products you have licensed from them.

You can get a repair cost of a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx

The USB connector on these models can be rather fragile. After many insert/removal cycles of the cable, especially if the connector is used to power the unit in a vehicle where it's exposed to vibrarion, there have been many reports of the socket coming loose internally.

Usually, the connector has "just" come unsoldered or has a broken solder joint to the printed circuit board. Many technically astute people report success resoldering it to the board. If you aren't comfortable doing such repairs, you should contact Garmin for repair.