Model S Main Screen Rebooting every 2 mins- Help!

[8cans]

Hi all

I'm in the UK and have been the proud owner of a Model S 75D for almost 2 months now. NOTHING has gone wrong, I love this car.

However on our first major family outing in the car today (200 ish mile drive), just as I was pulling into the supercharger station the main screen rebooted randomly. I charged the car and drove off (superchargers are amazing!). Then it proceeded to reboot every 2 minutes while i was driving for the remaining of the trip (4 hours). Its the large screen, the one above the steering wheel seems fine although this did also go blank twice. Its still doing it. I've tried various suggestions, rebooted the screens with a hard reset several times, removed all history in my navigation etc..(somebody suggested this as a fix) but the problem persists.

This is driving me crazy and is making the screen unusable. Extremely disappointing and frustrating if I'm going to need to take the car to a service station, particularly as I'm on holiday for a week and the sat nav- supercharger information is going to be very useful.

I still haven't had the V9 update pushed to me yet, it's on 2018.34.1

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Supposedly foot-on-brake and press-and-hold both scroll buttons is a harder reboot. Keep foot on brake and pushing both buttons until the Tesla T-Logo appears, and then you can release everything.

No idea if it really does a more detailed reboot.

I've also heard that memory starvation can be a cause of this sort of side effect (hence deleting your History etc.)

Did your latest software update ( 2018.34.1) arrive recently? (Might have been a side effect of that)

 

[8cans]

Thanks. I tried the brake technique but not sure if I did it properly so will try again. Latest update was a while ago, weeks, and everything was fine until now.

 

[DJP31]

Do you have a USB stick inserted? I’ve read they can cause the MCU to get into a bit of a loop. I’d also give the support line a call whilst you’re in the car as they can dial in and have a look at the logs.

 

[Twinsparks]

Do you have a USB stick inserted? I’ve read they can cause the MCU to get into a bit of a loop. I’d also give the support line a call whilst you’re in the car as they can dial in and have a look at the logs.

Similar to this.

Listening to a podcast from my iPhone whilst it was plugged into the front USB caused my screens to glitch and reboot several times, all since the last update (75D on 2018.34.1). Unplugged it 3 weeks ago and has not done it since....could be coincidence

 

[WannabeOwner]

as they can dial in and have a look at the logs

I hope that ain't the state of the technology

 

[DJP31]

I hope that ain't the state of the technology

If the download speed my Google WiFi reports is accurate I reckon it might be

 

[Beady3647]

My P85D is just coming up (in a week) to first MOT and I had this problem a couple of years ago. SC told me it was the USB stick I was using by diagnosing over the air and texting me! (I was amazed) I concluded that I would have to do without my own music choice until I read on another forum that USB sticks should be formatted to FAT32 prior to loading music. Since then no problem and can listen to what I want, when I want.

 

[8cans]

Thanks for the advice guys. Nothing plugged into USB. Called the service centre and they are going to check the logs remotely. Hopefully I don’t have to take it into the service centre since I’m currently on holiday so that’s going to be a pain in the backside!

 

[Rockster]

As crazy as it sounds, I had my MCU reboot over and over in response to a specific address typed into the nav system. it's completely reproducible. Every time I type that address in and then begin following the instructions, once I cross a certain point in my journey, the screen begins rebooting over and over.

 

[8cans]

Thanks all for the input. It seems resolved. I called the service centre and they said an update had got stuck in cache which was causing a reboot cycle. They force stopped the update remotely and all has been ok since. Hopefully this is a permanent fix!

 

[AudioBob]

I had a very similar problem I have a 3-month-old Model S 75D and I love it; it's been flawless.

Last Monday I got in the car to find that the main touchscreen was rebooting every 20 seconds -- which by the way rendered it undrivable because there wasn't time to put in the password! I did a full reboot and that reduced the reboot frequency sufficiently to put in the password, but I was very unsure about getting on the road with uncertainty on the controls.

So I called Tesla Roadside assistance, they said I should call customer support. The person I spoke to suggested power off and full reboot. Now, power off when you have under 10 seconds to make the keystrokes feels like an arcade game! But that didn't help. The (Norwegian) support person passed the problem to the team in Holland who (the next day) reported back that the issue was a 'stuck' firmware update. They were able to correct this and the car appeared fixed for about 10 min, but then the reboot cycling began again. Apparently, it had downloaded the firmware and stuck again - in some senses it is logical to expect the same outcome.

By this point, the car had been in this state for 2 days and I was (understandably) frustrated, more to be honest that I couldn't plan my day. The Dutch team escalated it to the Milton Keynes SC who, in turn, escalated it to a different technician (maybe in the US?). In any case, Wednesday am the App notified me that a firmware update was ready to install. Apparently, they can work remotely and clear out the memory before downloading proving the car is on WiFi

In summary, the various people I spoke to (five in total) were polite and helpful but I got the sense that the support team were overloaded, despite which they did broadly manage to call back and keep me informed.

So, the cool outcome is that a problem could be diagnosed and fixed remotely, no need to go to a SC, plus v 9.0 arrived and is good so far (FWIW I prefer the new UI). The less cool bit was that it disrupted 3 days whereas both they and I suspected it could have been done quicker. I got the feeling that this was not an isolated case but the 'solution' was being worked on in real time.

I was fascinated to see that although the touch-screen was out of action, a large part of the car remained awake and functioning. The difficult part is to understand exactly which 'assist' features work when the car is in the main-computer-only mode.

On a lighter note, in the midst of this, one support engineer told me that the car was 100% safe to drive without the touchscreen, but it was in 'manual mode'. "Do you still remember how to drive a normal car?". I got to thinking that it might be easy to forget that cruise control, AP, collision avoidance and park assistance etc were not working - and how do I reverse without a back-up camera? And to have to remember the handbrake and lights? Amazing how quickly we adapt to the 'new' when it is so much better!

Tesla, if you are listening, there are two suggestions:

1) The support line 'on-hold' music on is appalling. Come on! if you have an anxious customer waiting for 20 min, give us calming classical not techno!!

2) With a firmware update as significant as 9.0, there should be downloadable revision notes and an updated user manual immediately to hand.