How I Successfully removed the Garmin Pin Lock on MY Nuvi780 GPS:
Now before I begin, I want to make a few things VERY clear!
1) I choose my posts wisely, it's been a VERY long time since I last posted something about Jensen Brake Override Codes, and I wanted to post another discovery I made. I Spent countless hours trying to scour the internet and found nothing.
2) I did this as a Proof of Concept because I was really annoyed by Garmin charging excessively to fix this issue and some other d*uche charging for this service when you can do it yourself. This was done on MY LEGALLY PURCHASED UNIT...so before you even go that route, join the lemmings.
3) I wanted to silence those that sternly said it can't be done and that like a blind sheep you have to beg Garmin to fix it, provided you have proof of purchase/registration, which in all honesty, some of us may have thrown out or otherwise foolishly disposed of.
4) If you use this to unlock a stolen GPS, see suggestion above. You'll have a harder time re-installing the maps then unlocking the unit. Every unit has an ID that can be theoretically traced if the unit is declared stolen. You've been warned.
5) I don't want the locations where this gets posted to be blasted by little turd kids like "christianU2ber2" or any body else ignorant to give up on the first try and flame me for making this up. IT WORKS, just try harder. I spent a lot of time on figuring this out.
6) I am not responsible for anything stupid, wrong, illegal, or otherwise totally moronic you do to fry your unit in the process of this guide.
7) Garmin may very well have already fixed or plans on fixing this hole.
8) Lastly, I have no idea whether this is applicable to all Garmin devices.
In a nutshell, this procedure involves a firmware rollback to the earliest one, using an outdated version of webupdater, followed by a re-update of the firmware with the latest edition of webupdater, follow me so far?
PS: NO loss of bluetooth....
So now let's begin shall we? (Remember, your unit has to be pin locked)
Plug your unit (with the hold button engaged) to the computer. You'll notice that it will charge the battery, but the computer will not register a device. This is on MAC or PC. You won't get that DEEDUNH sound windows makes. The Pin lock disables the usb plug except the power.
SO....Unplug the unit and turn it off. Engage the hold switch and hold your finger in the middle of the touchscreen now plug it back to USB....wait....wait.....wait.....DEEDUNH! Booya!
The computer has identified the device but seconds later....DUNHDEE! (lol) the device has been seemingly disconnected. You will now be in touchscreen calibration mode. Touch the dots, do the thing, and BAM you'll be back at the pin input screen.
You see where this is going yet? Those few seconds of the device being registered by the computer are your window of opportunity for the firmware rollback/override.
2) So here's the tricky part. You need to find a site that hosts ALL of garmin's firmwares and softwares (Old and new). Morally, (and I think legally) I can't tell you the site explicitly, you gotta find it.
Install the USB Drivers for the garmin unit. I believe they are universal drivers for the most part, but some GPS have their own specific one.
What you need is WebUpdater 2.2 and the earliest firmware of your GPS unit.
So install that version of WebUpdater and ignore its prompts to update itself to the latest version (4.6 +). Have the firmware file ready.
Load up WebUpdater to the point where it says "Find Device" and do Step 1. This time for real. In those few seconds between the initial chime of windows registering the device. and the unit being in calibration mode, the name of your unit will be in the find device box. You now only have a very few seconds for the next part.
Now QUICKLY click through the motions and if all goes well, you'll see the GPS is in boot mode once again but this time with a different kind of font under the garmin logo. It tells you loading and erasing and more blah blah blah.
If and when the hardware wizard in windows asks you to install the new hardware, click on (automatic). Garmin will have crammed the installation info up the wizards hooha.
3) Now go back to WebUpdater and update it. Then plug in the now virgin GPS and update it to the latest firmware. You now have a fully unlocked GPS BUT no maps. It will be up to you to go buy them, re-download them from Garmin if you already bought them.
Hi, nice post. It seems to work in a nuvi 255, but i cant find the webupdater 2.2 anywhere, so i can't flash the firmware. Maybe you can send me a link or anything else. Thanks in advance
After a year researching this, with the help of the other forums and flashing using another tool (webuptdater says 'corrupted file'), i finally rolled back to earliest firmware with no luck: still asks for pin. So there's a final solution: bruteforcing it.