My first MFT black screen after two months owning...

[donm527]

I just got my first black screen today!! After over 2 months of ownership. Argh!! I have 2.8 and it ran well, except for sometimes losing my Sirius radio presets and doing a trick to get it back.

I start the car and reverse out of my parking space and that's when i notice my screen is black and no rear camera view.

I drive and try pressing the steering wheel controls and you can see the changes on the drivers display but still black on the center lcd.

I remove my usb jump drive and the sd card for navigation and no change.

i push the radio and AC power buttons and thank goodness the AC still turns on and off even though you can see/change temps and you hear the blip from turning radio on and off but no radio and still black screen.

After 5 minutes I have accepted that I will just leave it and show it to Ford tomorrow. I use my iphone to take a movie of all that I tried so that if it did correct itself, I dont want excuses on why they cant flash the new version... then the Sync logo appears and it's rebooting!!!

The only new thing I did recently is two days ago... I plugged in my usb flash drive and played mp3 music from the usb the last two days.

Also the only other thing was earlier today before I parked the car, the health check reminder came up and asked me if i wanted to do the health check. I said yes but forgot I didnt have BT turned on and had to cancel it... and went back to listening to usb then radio.

I'm gonna run it without USB in it and see if it comes back. I'm thinking its not liking USB. the music played without issue and shows album cover and everything. but I do notice it takes forever to build some sort of music catalog.

It's probably doing too many things in the background and locking up until luckily it rebooted this time.

Argh!! Do I want to get 2.11 really?

 

[vfral1]

Sorry to hear of another club member!

Please register your issue here...

http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=1404

 

[JDJones]

Appears you have experienced the MFT reboot process, described onscreen as scheduled maint. I've only had it occur once, very early in ownership after I added my iPod touch with a lot of music on the device. Like yours, I had a black screen for minutes before the reboot occured, sitting in my driveway. After removing my iPod and reloading it from iTunes, the problem on my Ex went away and has not reoccured.

From your description, it sounds like something became unstable, could be caused by the flash drive, indexing the music on it, or maybe in combination with your iPhone (you mentioned in your post).

Vic has recommended (and I strongly agree) that removing all the extra equipment and unpairing your phone is a good place to start. Then readd each device over time and see if there is any impact to MFT. Could be a single device, or combination of devices (try them in different sequences), or it could have been a once off event (like mine with my iPod rebuild).

As 2.11 is so new, it is a challenge to say updated software would resolve the issue, as it might have little to do with software or your MFT as the root cause.

Best of luck, keep us posted on what occurs. I have one rev earlier (2.7) and except for being a bit sluggish, mine has been very stable for the first 4 months of pretty heavy use.

 

[donm527]

thx. yeah i figure no more usb inserted and go back to just the sd card with for navigation and i dont use my phone anyways so turned off bt and run it like i have the first couple of months.

... but just a little over 24 hours from my first post i get a reboot! i made a stop at a house, turned off my ignition and wasnt more than a minute when i restarted and my car gives me a reboot at ignition. and all i did today is back and forth between fm and sirius.

i was afraid this might happen once i try mp3s... because i notice it saying it's building some voice command list or something when i plug the usb... probably reading all the song titles in case of voice command?

i'm thinking when you plug stuff in, that its building these type of files and they stay forever and get bigger and maybe causing an issue?

this is getting silly but i am not in a rush to run to my dealer to get the update. i hate taking my dealer for anything and i am also assessing the apillar rattle.

i love the car... but things like this... make the car more like a cheap toy. i wont take my home or work computer rebooting out of nowhere, why should i take this? silly.

they should have powered by linux and not microsoft! even at work i've gone away from microsoft server at the hardware level and went with citrix xenserver (linux based)... solid.

Appears you have experienced the MFT reboot process, described onscreen as scheduled maint. I've only had it occur once, very early in ownership after I added my iPod touch with a lot of music on the device. Like yours, I had a black screen for minutes before the reboot occured, sitting in my driveway. After removing my iPod and reloading it from iTunes, the problem on my Ex went away and has not reoccured.

From your description, it sounds like something became unstable, could be caused by the flash drive, indexing the music on it, or maybe in combination with your iPhone (you mentioned in your post).

Vic has recommended (and I strongly agree) that removing all the extra equipment and unpairing your phone is a good place to start. Then readd each device over time and see if there is any impact to MFT. Could be a single device, or combination of devices (try them in different sequences), or it could have been a once off event (like mine with my iPod rebuild).

As 2.11 is so new, it is a challenge to say updated software would resolve the issue, as it might have little to do with software or your MFT as the root cause.

Best of luck, keep us posted on what occurs. I have one rev earlier (2.7) and except for being a bit sluggish, mine has been very stable for the first 4 months of pretty heavy use.

 

[lmtdexplr]

Wow, I just joined the "black screen of death" club. Not that I want to be a member of this growing club. I just happened out of the blue when starting the LTD. I was not using usb and nothing elso plugged-in. I dropped it off at the dealer this morning, service advisor said he had no idea how long the fix will take, could be hours or days. I don't really care how long, I just want it fixed right the first time. I did not attempt "pull fuse 29". IMO that would only prolong the fix.

 

[Rocketfan]

I am waiting on 2.11 (I really want 3.x). As noted by many here, after almost 2 months of flawless performance, my MFT has started to glitch and restart periodically. My kids and friends now refer to it as the glitchy car. Sometimes I cannot get the USB or Bluetooth stereo to work from my iPhone (same and only phone paired since I owned the car)/ sometimes Bluetooth stereo works but USB doesn't (even though plugged into USB). Sometimes I get a nav card error (that won't go away with a restart but will magically go away if in frustration I give up and go to sleep vowing to take it to the dealer the next day only to wake up and have it work fine the next morning). Sometimes my channels for radio and Sirius all disappear (they still work, I just have to remember what channels were associated with the now blank buttons).

I could go on and on but the funny thing is I still like my Explorer and even MFT. I just can't rely on any MFT feature to work all the time which really is bad for Ford because they advertise and market these features so heavily to their premium customers (customers whose loyalty I assume Ford values and doesn't want to lose, having so recently gotten them to come back in the first place).

I wish they would take a book from the consumer electronics industry and recruit a bunch of super users to beta test new versions before release and give their engineers comments so Ford can see real issues in the field and how their versions are actually performing. Sign these people up to confidentiality agreements, give them a few freebies for participating (some geeks might do it just for early look at versions/ features) and it is a low cost win win for everyone.

I just wish that MFT would improve enough so my kids would stop referring to it as the glitch car.

 

[vfral1]

Wow, I just joined the "black screen of death" club. Not that I want to be a member of this growing club. I just happened out of the blue when starting the LTD. I was not using usb and nothing elso plugged-in. I dropped it off at the dealer this morning, service advisor said he had no idea how long the fix will take, could be hours or days. I don't really care how long, I just want it fixed right the first time. I did not attempt "pull fuse 29". IMO that would only prolong the fix.

Sorry to hear of your trouble, please add your issue here:

http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=320900

 

[OneFast440]

Got 2.11 last Thursday and I just had my navigation lock up on me on the freeway. Everything still worked as far as the MFT system. I could get around to different screens and work other functions (radio, climate, phone) however the system no longer thought I was moving. My location was never updated after that point. Good thing I was only going to work and I know how to get there but if it was a new place I would have been very upset.