Navi Performance Problems ('04)

[Jurista]

Hello all. I'm the proud owner of an '04 Pilot EX-L with Navi, which I purchased in November 2005. Within the first year, I started experiencing problems with the Navi, and since then they have gotten progressively worse. The problems vary from time to time. Examples include extremely sluggish, "laggy" performance or complete freeze-ups; inability to locate an address of, or a route to and from, established locations that have been successfully located previously; incorrect positioning, including wrong direction (i.e., vehicle is shown as proceeding south when headed north), miles behind current position on a highway, in the middle of a river when squarely on land, etc.

I am still using the original black DVD that came with the Pilot. I have been hesitant to upgrade since system performance has been so poor. I'd love to have the new maps, but if the system can't process an established route, new maps are of no use to me.

I've brought up this issue with my dealer twice and they have been unable to replicate or address the problem. They've given me various excuses, mostly falling back on "user error." They've advised that in their experience, the Navi systems rarely, if ever, encounter problems. Their only suggestion has been to upgrade the DVD. If that doesn't work, they've indicated that they'll need to send the Navi system (the box under the seat) to California, which would involve a several hundred dollar charge to even assess the problem, let alone fix it. At that point, I might as well just buy a Garmin!

I'm perfectly willing to upgrade the DVD if it will fix the problem. Any thoughts on whether this will provide a solution? I'm suspicious that it is a hardware error that a new DVD will not correct, but I am hoping for some feedback from the group here as to whether that is the case.

I've also read the older posts (from 2008) suggesting the backup clear/force download process. I apologize if this is a stupid question, but since the battery was recently disconnected (to replace it), would this have accomplished the same thing, or would you recommend this process prior to, or in addition to, upgrading the DVD?

Thanks in advance for your responses! The Pilot only has about 60K miles and I hope to keep it for a long time to come. Unfortunately, this issue has left my husband and I with a bad taste in our mouths about Honda technology, to the point where we bought a base Acura TSX last year instead of one with the Tech package, although we would have loved to have the upgraded technology if we were sure that it would work!

[Jurista]

By way of update, I tried the backup clear and force download process last night. Satellite lock appears to have improved (although the weather has been cloudy and rainy, resulting in decreased reception), but when I entered my home address, I received the yellow "Destination not found in the database" box, despite the system having located the address on the day previous, as well as numerous other times.

Anyone else have experience with these problems? Thoughts on whether the update DVD would help?