Sync my ride MFT upgrade avaliable?

[wilsons66604]

Performed my update on the way back from Maine. Installation process took at 27 minutes to install all the necessary files and almost 15 minutes of silence while the system ran the upgrade. Once the system came online I tried a few functions like pairing the phone, going thru Nav, etc, but found no Nav maps. Shut the car off and restarted; Nav cam back.

 

I noticed a big bonus; I still have my Nav Favorites and saved radio stations. II tried switiching between Nav maps and Weather maps using voice commands finding the maps appear to pop onto the screen. So, I believe I see a speed improvement or it's my imagination.

Only 27 minutes?!? Wow. Mine took 3 times as long (but I was sitting still )

My weather map has always been useless. I think I got a correct radar image 3 times in a year. Do you have much luck with the weather map display?

[seabee78]

I D/L'd the update to my USB stick but I'm just going to keep it there for now. My MFT is working flawlessly *crosses fingers* . Since I got my Edge back in Aug 2 I have had only one crash/ reboot . I pick and choose tracks, artists, and playlists from my 1000+ songs daily and it works great. Voice for Phone and Nav work great. I don't use voice for climate but I keep it on Auto so never change temp anyway.

[wlepse]

Well it took my unit almost an hour to update from 2.7. Immediately I noticed that the screen was more responsive and when I went to the syncmyride site it immediately updated my status, then within an hour we noticed it is randomly changing audio sources. Never did this before so this does not look good. Also alsways sasys call ended when we get in the car???? So 2.11 is no better for me...if anything it is worse.

[wilsons66604]

I D/L'd the update to my USB stick but I'm just going to keep it there for now. My MFT is working flawlessly *crosses fingers* . Since I got my Edge back in Aug 2 I have had only one crash/ reboot . I pick and choose tracks, artists, and playlists from my 1000+ songs daily and it works great. Voice for Phone and Nav work great. I don't use voice for climate but I keep it on Auto so never change temp anyway.

Good idea.

[wilsons66604]

Well it took my unit almost an hour to update from 2.7. Immediately I noticed that the screen was more responsive and when I went to the syncmyride site it immediately updated my status, then within an hour we noticed it is randomly changing audio sources. Never did this before so this does not look good. Also alsways sasys call ended when we get in the car???? So 2.11 is no better for me...if anything it is worse.

I was also on 2.7. I had the random audio source problem before I went to 2.11. The upgrade didn't help it. The random audio source is during startup. Sometimes it will start playing my last used option (BlueTooth) then switch to FM

My guess is that they've been adjusting the sequence of system startups to make the nav and voice have priority. This sometimes makes the audio systems guess at a source while it's waiting for a slice of processor time

[rwolson]

Only 27 minutes?!? Wow. Mine took 3 times as long (but I was sitting still )

My weather map has always been useless. I think I got a correct radar image 3 times in a year. Do you have much luck with the weather map display?

 

The current version, 2.11 weather works better than version 2.8. I see maps updating in a timely manner. Version 2.8 weather maps updated hourly and I found them very unreliable. Now, they seem to update each time I go to Weather Maps.

 

ALS, just for grins I tested using voice commands, weather map then map after I setup a destination. The system updated fairly quickly.

[wlepse]

I was also on 2.7. I had the random audio source problem before I went to 2.11. The upgrade didn't help it. The random audio source is during startup. Sometimes it will start playing my last used option (BlueTooth) then switch to FM

My guess is that they've been adjusting the sequence of system startups to make the nav and voice have priority. This sometimes makes the audio systems guess at a source while it's waiting for a slice of processor time

Interesting...we never had it randomly change sources before and this time it did it wasn't during start up it was about 5 minutes into the ride. Went from Sirius to FM.

[wlepse]

Just found one other oddity and it isn't related to the car. The flash drive I used for the update is screwed up. It is a 2GB stick that still shows as a 2GB stick but won't allow me to write to it beyond 464MB leaving 1.43GB unused. Tried reformatting but nothing seems to clear this....before the upgrade this device was full of other stuff I took off since the installer said the drive needed to be empty, so I know it was working last week. Maybe it is unrelated but thought I would mention it. If this thing is toast that is fine but I would have been upset if this was a bigger stick.

 

 

****Update: Last night I tried formatting the stick again still nothing. Then I tried switching from FAT to NTFS, that did the trick. Haven't gone back to FAT yet but at least I recovered teh part that was unusable prior.

Edited September 27, 2011 by wlepse

[wlepse]

Wishing I never did this "upgrade." Prior to the upgrade we had some slow responses and some quirkiness (minus the one nav failure) but it was still very useable you just couldn't rush it. Now the system is downright useless. As I mentioned above the the radio was ranomly changing audio sources which is new, we constantly get a notice saying call ended whenever you start up the car. We have gotten the "system maintenance" message at least 12 times and this morning the screen is completely blank. I guess it is time to start documenting all the failures so I can present it to Ford.

[ahammet]

Wishing I never did this "upgrade." Prior to the upgrade we had some slow responses and some quirkiness (minus the one nav failure) but it was still very useable you just couldn't rush it. Now the system is downright useless. As I mentioned above the the radio was ranomly changing audio sources which is new, we constantly get a notice saying call ended whenever you start up the car. We have gotten the "system maintenance" message at least 12 times and this morning the screen is completely blank. I guess it is time to start documenting all the failures so I can present it to Ford.

 

I was running v2.8 and the Nav would take 5-10 minutes to kick in. I got seriously pissed with it. I pulled the fuse a couple of times and did a master reset a couple of times and wow what a difference it made. Fast, responsive and quick to load. You have to rememeber these things are running a computer with apps on top of it, sometimes it needs a good reboot etc for the glitches to be removed. I would suggest this before anything else.

[wlepse]

I was running v2.8 and the Nav would take 5-10 minutes to kick in. I got seriously pissed with it. I pulled the fuse a couple of times and did a master reset a couple of times and wow what a difference it made. Fast, responsive and quick to load. You have to rememeber these things are running a computer with apps on top of it, sometimes it needs a good reboot etc for the glitches to be removed. I would suggest this before anything else.

Does anyone know how this thing works? What I mean is what does the system do when you turn off the car? Does it go into something similar to a sleep mode rather than a true shutdown? I am assuming that is the case otherwise pulling fuses would do nothing more than shutting the car off. If this is true that the system sleeps it would make sense that over time it gets more wonky but why wouldn't Ford set it up so you could force a reboot like you can on a desktop. Seems like it would be a simple software change, worst case it isn't configurable and the system reboots while you are driving on occasion and you get the "system perfoming scheduled maintenance" screen we are all too familiar with.

[akirby]

Does anyone know how this thing works? What I mean is what does the system do when you turn off the car? Does it go into something similar to a sleep mode rather than a true shutdown? I am assuming that is the case otherwise pulling fuses would do nothing more than shutting the car off. If this is true that the system sleeps it would make sense that over time it gets more wonky but why wouldn't Ford set it up so you could force a reboot like you can on a desktop. Seems like it would be a simple software change, worst case it isn't configurable and the system reboots while you are driving on occasion and you get the "system perfoming scheduled maintenance" screen we are all too familiar with.

 

Because you shouldn't need to reboot it. They never had this problem with Sync and they didn't expect these problems with MFT. And I'm sure the new version won't have these problems either. Just consider it a temporary workaround.

[wlepse]

I can understand they didn't expect these problems but when dealers suggest to owners to perform these tasks you would think it would occur to Ford to add this to the software.

[drpepper]

Akirby... "Shouldn't need reboot"- Let me add my perspective. Now 1 year into my 2011 MKX & base software version changes(1.8, 2.3, 2.4 ,2.7, 2.8, 2.11) on a $48K lux Lincoln & still not there yet 1 year later? The fuse pull instead of a reboot selection or reboot app is JUST silly. There is a "master reset" so why not "full reboot”? The reboot app is very, very easy. Open glove box, plug in, 2 sec later, forced reboot, remove & put back in glove box. The real RUB is that they will not make this avail to the masses or incorp in the software. The work around is the delayed reboot cab. When asked since there is a delayed reboot avail why not regular reboot. They do not answer or screen the posts when they get too detailed. Please- that is not Great customer service. There are so many issues that force me to use the reboot tool: the phone always disconnecting or "appearing connected when not", the usb music voice corruption or picture metadata corruption, nav voice off or freeze, etc. Other Issues we are to believe that were not expected: The shelving of the web browser, the sync my phone app for MFT not developed & still in "issue mode" due to locked shared files from Microsoft, the app linc, the lack of more than i wireless usb to network car, the picture caller id that is not listed in their pdf of tested phones & only has shown to work on what 2 or 3 phones- nice product placement in the "fringe" TV shows put in reality the avg Joe will not see it work, etc. etc.,

[wilsons66604]

I can understand they didn't expect these problems but when dealers suggest to owners to perform these tasks you would think it would occur to Ford to add this to the software.

Recent versions of the Touch software does include a reboot if the system gets stupid. Problem is, the reboot is not soon enough. I was driving around with a broken system for a couple of days before the software did the automated reboot. Not good enough!

[wlepse]

Recent versions of the Touch software does include a reboot if the system gets stupid. Problem is, the reboot is not soon enough. I was driving around with a broken system for a couple of days before the software did the automated reboot. Not good enough!

Very true...but again if they know this forced reboot can "help" the issues why not have it built into the software. If they could program it to do this automatically thery could add a button somewhere in teh menu to force a reboot/reset. Don't understand why people need to find their own work arounds when they already have a pretty good idea of what can help.

[akirby]

Akirby... "Shouldn't need reboot"- Let me add my perspective. Now 1 year into my 2011 MKX & base software version changes(1.8, 2.3, 2.4 ,2.7, 2.8, 2.11) on a $48K lux Lincoln & still not there yet 1 year later? The fuse pull instead of a reboot selection or reboot app is JUST silly. There is a "master reset" so why not "full reboot”? The reboot app is very, very easy. Open glove box, plug in, 2 sec later, forced reboot, remove & put back in glove box. The real RUB is that they will not make this avail to the masses or incorp in the software. The work around is the delayed reboot cab. When asked since there is a delayed reboot avail why not regular reboot. They do not answer or screen the posts when they get too detailed. Please- that is not Great customer service. There are so many issues that force me to use the reboot tool: the phone always disconnecting or "appearing connected when not", the usb music voice corruption or picture metadata corruption, nav voice off or freeze, etc. Other Issues we are to believe that were not expected: The shelving of the web browser, the sync my phone app for MFT not developed & still in "issue mode" due to locked shared files from Microsoft, the app linc, the lack of more than i wireless usb to network car, the picture caller id that is not listed in their pdf of tested phones & only has shown to work on what 2 or 3 phones- nice product placement in the "fringe" TV shows put in reality the avg Joe will not see it work, etc. etc.,

 

Yes, customer service could be better. No argument. But having done software development myself and being in corporate IT for 25 years - I understand how this stuff happens. And it doesn't matter that you caused the problem yourself - you're still stuck trying to dig yourself out of a deep hole while it's caving in around you. And they don't have decades of experience building complicated software either. That's why they outsourced it and that's what ended up biting them in the rear. They've been trying to fix it for a year. A few months ago they gave up and ordered a rewrite with internal staff and help from the real Microsoft. At this point I think they're doing everything possible to get it fixed as soon as possible. I think they've been doing that for over a year. It just hasn't been very successful.

 

I'm not making excuses for Ford - they bear 100% responsibility for this fiasco. Just trying to point out that they're not ignoring the problem and in fact they're putting all available resources into it - which is why you don't have the web browser, applink and other promised features. That's just how large software projects work unfortunately - everywhere, not just Ford.

 

 

But I will once again object to the contact photo issue. This is NOT a Ford/Sync/MFT issue at all. MFT supports the bluetooth profile and this has been proven with a windows phone. Ford has no control over forcing the phone mfrs to support that particular bluetooth profile - all they can do is code it on their side. Complain to the cell phone mfrs and providers if you want support for that feature. No changes required in Sync/MFT. Same for reading text messages. And don't say it's false advertising - it's not and we've already discussed it ad nauseum.

[akirby]

Very true...but again if they know this forced reboot can "help" the issues why not have it built into the software. If they could program it to do this automatically thery could add a button somewhere in teh menu to force a reboot/reset. Don't understand why people need to find their own work arounds when they already have a pretty good idea of what can help.

 

Because they already programmed it to automatically reboot itself without any user intervention which is much more user friendly than having to explain when and where to use the user-defined reboot.

And I'm sure they believed 2.11 would fix the problems and stabilize the system for 99% of the users.

 

I'd say it's likely that the developers do not know how many people are resorting to pulling the fuse to fix these temporary problems. More customer feedback would definitely help.

 

It wouldn't surprise me to see something like that in the new version alongside Master Reset.

[wlepse]

akirby...I can't speak for everyone but I am not trying to say Ford isn't trying to fix it. I just can't understand why they are aware that rebooting can help some issues and not have this built into the more recent software updates. In another thread one member even said they supplied him code to reboot his on the fly, so they have the capability. I just can't understand what it would hurt to give people a safer way of doing this. Realistically if the dealer tells people they need to shut off the car, open the door, wait 30 seconds then restart, this is not something you can do safely on a highway but pressing a button is pretty simple.

[akirby]

akirby...I can't speak for everyone but I am not trying to say Ford isn't trying to fix it. I just can't understand why they are aware that rebooting can help some issues and not have this built into the more recent software updates. In another thread one member even said they supplied him code to reboot his on the fly, so they have the capability. I just can't understand what it would hurt to give people a safer way of doing this. Realistically if the dealer tells people they need to shut off the car, open the door, wait 30 seconds then restart, this is not something you can do safely on a highway but pressing a button is pretty simple.

 

I answered in the other thread - because some manager somewhere is afraid of bad PR (hey, Ford released a ctrl-alt-del solution because MFT is screwed up) or potential liability and nobody is willing to escalate above them to get the ok.

 

After all, Ford is still a large corporation and that's just how these things work. They also don't have much experience with complicated software and end users.

 

I'm sure support would love to do it but their hands are tied.

 

Has anyone tried looking at the files on the immediate reboot to see what's in there? Or is it just a binary?

[Xargon79]

Well, I am running the 2.11 update right now. To me it seems hung at 6 of 9 files, but I am giving it at least the 45 mins before I toss in the towel and try later. No error messages, just waiting for it to get past the BT4T-14F497-AP.ZIP file. Will update later.

[Xargon79]

Well, I am running the 2.11 update right now. To me it seems hung at 6 of 9 files, but I am giving it at least the 45 mins before I toss in the towel and try later. No error messages, just waiting for it to get past the BT4T-14F497-AP.ZIP file. Will update later.

 

After waiting an 50 minutes and still no progress I called the Tech Team. The analyst I spoke with said they had a few reports of this happening. He had me back out of the update, and then perform a Master Reset. After chatting with the analyst, I am wondering if maybe a hidden file on my usb stick could be causing the issue. I am trying to go from 2.8 to 2.11. I did try the update a second time with the exact results: stopping at file 6 of 9. Anyway, I have several other thumb drives so I will grab some coffee and give it another shot this morning.

 

Cheers!

Edited October 1, 2011 by Xargon79

[Xargon79]

After waiting an 50 minutes and still no progress I called the Tech Team. The analyst I spoke with said they had a few reports of this happening. He had me back out of the update, and then perform a Master Reset. After chatting with the analyst, I am wondering if maybe a hidden file on my usb stick could be causing the issue. I am trying to go from 2.8 to 2.11. I did try the update a second time with the exact results: stopping at file 6 of 9. Anyway, I have several other thumb drives so I will grab some coffee and give it another shot this morning.

 

Cheers!

 

Well, wish I could report more positive news, but after multiple attempts using not one, not two, not three, but four USB drives, I am still getting the same results. The process hangs at the same place every single time. I went and bought a brand new USB drive that had an LED so I could watch drive activity. When the update got to 6 out of 9 files. there was activity for a few minutes then nothing. I guess I am not going to get this update done, and I am not really of the mind to let the dealer have it just to perform this update. I really thought this would be a very straight forward process, but I must have a problem child. Fortunately, version 2.8 has not given me many issues so I will just stay happy with this for now. I am putting a couple screen shots below in case anyone has an idea. Please feel free to post, I am more than willing to try something.

 

Regards!

[rwolson]

Well, wish I could report more positive news, but after multiple attempts using not one, not two, not three, but four USB drives, I am still getting the same results. The process hangs at the same place every single time. I went and bought a brand new USB drive that had an LED so I could watch drive activity. When the update got to 6 out of 9 files. there was activity for a few minutes then nothing. I guess I am not going to get this update done, and I am not really of the mind to let the dealer have it just to perform this update. I really thought this would be a very straight forward process, but I must have a problem child. Fortunately, version 2.8 has not given me many issues so I will just stay happy with this for now. I am putting a couple screen shots below in case anyone has an idea. Please feel free to post, I am more than willing to try something.

 

Regards!

 

 

Sounds like a corrupted file. Did you copy the downloaded file to each USB drive? If yes, I suggest downloading the update again and copying to your drive. The important point, you know how to back out, but you lose sometime during the process.

[drpepper]

I answered in the other thread - because some manager somewhere is afraid of bad PR (hey, Ford released a ctrl-alt-del solution because MFT is screwed up) or potential liability and nobody is willing to escalate above them to get the ok.

After all, Ford is still a large corporation and that's just how these things work. They also don't have much experience with complicated software and end users.

I'm sure support would love to do it but their hands are tied.

Has anyone tried looking at the files on the immediate reboot to see what's in there? Or is it just a binary?

 

Here is the message I got from the ford rep that sent me the reboot app. Remember in the sync forum there was an older thread (8mths ago?) where you had to ask for the reboot app for the non-mft version & the mod did take & honored those requests for awhile. I asked- & was told not MFT. But later another I asked a Ford rep & said they could send a mft version upon request. Prob like akirby said higher bosses won't let that get out of control???

 

"Attached is a copy of the tool to restart your MyTouch system without pulling the fuse. Extract the files to the root folder of a USB thumb drive that it FAT or FAT32 formatted. If your MyTouch system is still working, it will automatically restart several seconds after you plug in the USB thumb drive. Note that this tool will only work on your 2011 Lincoln MKX, VIN ...... So ....Do you think it is locked or if they just had to "say" that? Can a .cab file have a validity ck to a vin #? The file is a 8400 byte reboot.cab file & an autoinstal.lst 448 byte file. That is it.