2011 Edge/MKX My Touch and Sync Problems

[revOevoM]

Has anyone noticed that since the upgrade the "i" on the main screen is YELLOW. Mine used to be white. I didn't notice this until yesterday when I was using my travel link and noticed the "i" is now bright yellow.

Mine's still white, too.

I spoke a bit too soon.

 

I just returned from running some errands. All my Travel Link subs are still working. So I got that goin' for me.

 

I played with a few settings menus before I turned the car off when I got home - some menus I had not been in since installing the 2.3 and 2.4 updates. Just as I was about to shut the car off, I noticed the i is now a bright yellow! So I got that goin' for me as well.

[Ctrl-z]

Typical Microsoft, buggy!

 

This is a completely in-house FORD development. First time they have ever attempted a project like this. I believe Ford lacked resources and expertise. It was rushed to market with very limited testing. And the major and continuing f-ups show it. I'd say the MyTouch system is far less technically reliable than the previous Sync system primarily because neither Microsoft, nor anyone else experienced with the technology, took an active role in its development.

 

Of course the base embedded automotive computer system was developed by Microsoft and is a reasonably mature system, having been in development for over 10 years. I do not know what version of it Ford adapted but I'm sure it wasn't the current version 7. It is used by a variety of other car makers and suppliers (Kia UVO and Nissan Leaf for example).

[11Sport]

Read your post before I left work. Never even tried the travel link button, so when I got in my driveway I thought I'd play a bit. Pressed the info button and went though all the stuff there. HOW COOL. Got gas prices, got weather and weather maps, got movie listings, sports scores and more. Went inside to tell the wife about all the cool stuff I found. Took her out to show it to her and nothing worked. Pushed the button and just got the "Accessing Information....May Take A While" notice, and then nothing. Still said I was subscribed to everything, but I guess I have a once a day limit on usage. (Computers really do need a sarcasm font)

 

My services won't work if the Edge is in the garage. Must be bad reception.

[revOevoM]

My services won't work if the Edge is in the garage. Must be bad reception.

Geez, I hope you're using the new sarcasm font. You know that Sirius is a satellite subscription service, right? You need a clear view of the sky, just like GPS. Pardon me if you really are being sarcastic.

[linkstur]

My services won't work if the Edge is in the garage. Must be bad reception.

 

Could be. I was in the driveway when it happened, but close to the house, so you might be on to something. I noticed when it wasn't working, there were hour glasses by the services. Today, when it worked again, there were carrots.

 

Going back to one of my first complaints, I spoke to the dealer today and we talked about the remote start and the seats and the steering wheel not heating up. He told me that according to the book, ambient needs to be 32 or below. I know someone mentioned that in the forum earlier. But he went on to say that 32 to 80 is considered "moderate", and according to the book, neither the air nor the heat come on when the temperature is in the moderate range. I don't necessarily agree with what they call moderate, but I don't unerstand why they (FORD) can't be more detailed with some of their information. This is a spec that I think is kind of important.

 

BTW, my "I" is still white.

[revOevoM]

I have solved the mystery of the yellow i.

 

Today, my i was still yellow, turning that color after toying around in some menus. Upon pressing the i, the Notifications tab of the Sync Services was selected - I must have left it on that tab yesterday. There was one Notification - I had changed a phone setting and the confirm was there. It dawned on me that exact moment - the i was yellow to signify a notification was available to view. Sure enough, upon deletion, the i returned to its normal white color.

[wilsons66604]

I have solved the mystery of the yellow i.

 

Today, my i was still yellow, turning that color after toying around in some menus. Upon pressing the i, the Notifications tab of the Sync Services was selected - I must have left it on that tab yesterday. There was one Notification - I had changed a phone setting and the confirm was there. It dawned on me that exact moment - the i was yellow to signify a notification was available to view. Sure enough, upon deletion, the i returned to its normal white color.

Cool! That's good to know

[revOevoM]

Another self-reboot after 2.4 :wacko:

 

I had a route set yesterday. I received a Traffic notification that there is an incident on my route. The good thing is this is the first time this has happened and it's nice to see the Traffic notification app is working. I display details and select Avoid. Nothing. Did I press hard enough? (not going into that, now) Press Avoid again. Black screen. Reboot. Audio picks up (from USB conected iPod Touch) right where it left off. Route reinstated too. Had to reconnect phone manually. All Travel Link subs still working. Everything's been fine since.

[GatorCat]

I'm having similar experiences after upgrade to 2.4 about a week and a half ago.

 

I had typical issues previously including inconsistent brightness of main screen, volume levels out of whack, had nav fault several times that took several restart cycles to resolve, etc.

 

After going to 2.4, i still have inconsistent brightness of main screen (where it stays day bright on first startup at night sometimes) and had 1 major nav fault which wouldn't resolve until overnight.

 

Last night our seat heaters wouldn't work after startup. Tried for about 5 minutes when suddenly screen goes black and does full restart, sync maintenance screen. After that it worked fine and was much faster for responses.

 

My prior car was a G35 and every 3-6 months the whole nav/radio/environ system would freeze up in the morning and take about 15 minutes for complete reboot, but then it would work flawlessly until the next reboot.

 

I can deal with occasional reboots but all this uncertainty with various functionality is really disturbing. I had higher hopes for the 2.4 update.

[Albertabound]

Further to my post on February 10.

 

 

The replacement APIM arrived on February 11. I logged into my account on the Ford Sync web site and selected my Sync History. Over the course of the day I logged in a number of times. On the first occasion nothing was there as when the tech fried the original APIM everything was wiped out. By the end of the day there were 16 entries as confirmed installations

1 - Sync Gen2-V1.8 1 - Sync Gen2 - V2.3 and 14 Sync Gen 2 - V2.4.

 

At 4:15 p.m. The following confirmed installations also were showing.

 

 

BT4T - 14D546-AG

BT4T - 14F496-BK

BT4T - 14F497-AG

Sync Compatible Software

BT4T - 14F603-AG

 

When I checked at 4:30 p.m.the five items above were gone.

 

I was away from 4:30p.m. until 8:00 p.m. and when I returned there was a message on my answering machine from the Dealer advising that the new APIM was defective and they had a new one coming in for the next day (Saturday February 12. They expected that my vehicle should be ready between 2 and 3 p.m.. Rather than say they would call me, they would like me to call them between 2 & 3 p.m.

 

Back to my Sync account on the Sync Web site the next morning and 4 more confirmed installations of Sync Gen2 - V2.4 showing as confirmed installations between 10:00 a.m. and 12:30 p,m.

 

At 1:30 p.m. The other 5 confirmed installations were shown again.

 

As of today there has been no changes. I will call the dealer tomorrow and if I am informed everything has been completed will go and set up in their parking lot and go through everything on my Lincoln Touch with particular emphasis on those things that have been reported on this forum by persons receiving the Gen2 - V2.4 upgrade. I suspect that I will have a lot of work ahead to get all the navigation and telephone information back to where it was.

 

My wife and myself leave for Southern California in a week and the last thing I need is the system going down while we are driving on I-15 through Montana, Idaho and Utah at this time of the year.

Edited February 13, 2011 by Albertabound

[wilsons66604]

Further to my post on February 10.

 

 

The replacement APIM arrived on February 11. I logged into my account on the Ford Sync web site and selected my Sync History. Over the course of the day I logged in a number of times. On the first occasion nothing was there as when the tech fried the original APIM everything was wiped out. By the end of the day there were 16 entries as confirmed installations

1 - Sync Gen2-V1.8 1 - Sync Gen2 - V2.3 and 14 Sync Gen 2 - V2.4.

 

At 4:15 p.m. The following confirmed installations also were showing.

 

 

BT4T - 14D546-AG

BT4T - 14F496-BK

BT4T - 14F497-AG

Sync Compatible Software

BT4T - 14F603-AG

 

When I checked at 4:30 p.m.the five items above were gone.

 

I was away from 4:30p.m. until 8:00 p.m. and when I returned there was a message on my answering machine from the Dealer advising that the new APIM was defective and they had a new one coming in for the next day (Saturday February 12. They expected that my vehicle should be ready between 2 and 3 p.m.. Rather than say they would call me, they would like me to call them between 2 & 3 p.m.

 

Back to my Sync account on the Sync Web site the next morning and 4 more confirmed installations of Sync Gen2 - V2.4 showing as confirmed installations between 10:00 a.m. and 12:30 p,m.

 

At 1:30 p.m. The other 5 confirmed installations were shown again.

 

As of today there has been no changes. I will call the dealer tomorrow and if I am informed everything has been completed will go and set up in their parking lot and go through everything on my Lincoln Touch with particular emphasis on those things that have been reported on this forum by persons receiving the Gen2 - V2.4 upgrade. I suspect that I will have a lot of work ahead to get all the navigation and telephone information back to where it was.

 

My wife and myself leave for Southern California in a week and the last thing I need is the system going down while we are driving on I-15 through Montana, Idaho and Utah at this time of the year.

In case you weren't confused enough;

You should check the installation history page

 

here's mine.

The first attempt to install 2.4 was on 12/8

The second and successful attempt was on 1/5

 

BT4T-14D544-BE Gen2 - V2.4 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 1/5/2011

BT4T-14D544-BE Gen2 - V2.4 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 1/5/2011

BT4T-14D544-AJ Gen2 - V1.8 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CU 1/5/2011

BT4T-14D544-BE Gen2 - V2.4 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 1/5/2011

BT4T-14D544-AJ Gen2 - V1.8 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 1/5/2011

BT4T-14D544-AJ Gen2 - V1.8 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 1/5/2011

BT4T-14D544-AJ Gen2 - V1.8 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 12/8/2010

BT4T-14D544-AJ Gen2 - V1.8 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 12/8/2010

BT4T-14D544-AJ Gen2 - V1.8 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 12/8/2010

BT4T-14D544-AJ Gen2 - V1.8 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 12/8/2010

BT4T-14D544-AJ Gen2 - V1.8 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 10/19/2010

BT4T-14D544-AJ Gen2 - V1.8 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 9/8/2010

BT4T-14D544-AJ Gen2 - V1.8 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 9/8/2010

[richy]

Here's mine:

 

T4T-14D544-BEGen2 - V2.4SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI2/11/2011 BT4T-14D544-BEGen2 - V2.4SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI2/11/2011 BT4T-14D544-BEGen2 - V2.4SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI2/11/2011 BT4T-14D544-BEGen2 - V2.4SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI2/11/2011 BT4T-14D544-BEGen2 - V2.4SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI1/7/2011 BT4T-14D544-AJGen2 - V1.8SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECU1/7/2011 BT4T-14D544-BEGen2 - V2.4SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI1/7/2011 BT4T-14D544-AJGen2 - V1.8SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI1/7/2011 BT4T-14D544-AJGen2 - V1.8SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI1/7/2011 BT4T-14D544-AJGen2 - V1.8SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI12/30/2010 BT4T-14D544-AJGen2 - V1.8SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI11/24/2010 BT4T-14D544-AJGen2 - V1.8SYNC GEN 2 IMAGECI11/2/2010

 

I was fortunate that I was having no problems before my Gen2 update. It has remained flawless. I am very pleased with MLT.

[linkstur]

Just wanted to share some observations with you all....

 

I am convinced that this is a "Not for Prime Time" system that Ford released. It's hard to believe that a $49,000 vehicle takes over 40 seconds before the radio will turn on. That said, I've noticed that this system really does act like an old computer. If you try to input anything before it's ready, it will either significantly slow down or hang. This problem is more pronounced when using blue tooth and especially USB devices. A large stick (4 gig or greater) takes a lot of resources. Indexing takes up to 5 minutes and then it goes into creating a command list...another 2 or 3 minutes.

 

The other night, I input a command while a thumb drive was indexing and the system hung up and stopped playing music from it. The screen locked up with what was playing when it happened. I was able to change devices and play the radio and Sirius, but the screen was still frozen. I figured I'd just turn off the ignition and open the door to reset it, but when I opened the door, the radio continued to play. Not much more I could do, so I just left it and went in the house. About 10 minutes later, I heard the alarm going off from the car. Went out and shut it off. Turned on the car and a big red star showed up saying 911 service is unavailable. Another notice came up saying the fuel system has been shut off and I needed to contact the dealer for a reset. Apparently, the computer thought I had been in an accident. I can only guess that I may have made a call to 911 had I stayed in the car, assuming my phone worked, which it occasionally does. I reset the fuel system and things are back to normal.

 

The system is a great ideal and when it works, it is really cool. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to have set a precedence to release products as soon as possible and fix them as they go along. It seems that this could be what's happening with this product. I don't mean to beat this down too much, because I still like the car and even the MLT, but you would think that a system that controls so many aspects of a vehicle would be more reliable than what this one is. I'm sure we'll eventually get to that point, but we should have already been there when we paid for the car. I've only had mine a little more than a week, so I'm just venting a little here.

[ntrlsur]

Just wanted to share some observations with you all....

 

I am convinced that this is a "Not for Prime Time" system that Ford released. It's hard to believe that a $49,000 vehicle takes over 40 seconds before the radio will turn on. That said, I've noticed that this system really does act like an old computer. If you try to input anything before it's ready, it will either significantly slow down or hang. This problem is more pronounced when using blue tooth and especially USB devices. A large stick (4 gig or greater) takes a lot of resources. Indexing takes up to 5 minutes and then it goes into creating a command list...another 2 or 3 minutes.

 

The other night, I input a command while a thumb drive was indexing and the system hung up and stopped playing music from it. The screen locked up with what was playing when it happened. I was able to change devices and play the radio and Sirius, but the screen was still frozen. I figured I'd just turn off the ignition and open the door to reset it, but when I opened the door, the radio continued to play. Not much more I could do, so I just left it and went in the house. About 10 minutes later, I heard the alarm going off from the car. Went out and shut it off. Turned on the car and a big red star showed up saying 911 service is unavailable. Another notice came up saying the fuel system has been shut off and I needed to contact the dealer for a reset. Apparently, the computer thought I had been in an accident. I can only guess that I may have made a call to 911 had I stayed in the car, assuming my phone worked, which it occasionally does. I reset the fuel system and things are back to normal.

 

The system is a great ideal and when it works, it is really cool. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to have set a precedence to release products as soon as possible and fix them as they go along. It seems that this could be what's happening with this product. I don't mean to beat this down too much, because I still like the car and even the MLT, but you would think that a system that controls so many aspects of a vehicle would be more reliable than what this one is. I'm sure we'll eventually get to that point, but we should have already been there when we paid for the car. I've only had mine a little more than a week, so I'm just venting a little here.

 

 

Blame Ford not Microsoft. The underlying system which is a version of Windows CE is very stable. Its the ford software application that is causing the issues.. The underlying software has been running huge retail businesses POS terminals for at least 15 years almost. Ford did a crap job of writing the software. They used Java for alot of it and they should have been using C# or the .net framework.

[linkstur]

OK, now that I'm done venting, hopefully, here's some useful information. The problem with the USB and the AV not showing up in the infotainment display to the right of the speedometer can be fixed by just hitting the left button and then going back with the right button ( on the steering wheel).

 

I was also having problem getting album art to display when playing mp3's from a memory stick. After a lot of testing it appears the only way to do it is to create a separate folder for each artist. Place your music in the corresponding folder along with the album art. Then you have to re-name the album art in each folder to "folder.jpg". Unfortunately, this means that even though you may have songs from multilple albums, you can only dislplay one picture for each artist. But I guess it's better than nothing.

 

If anybody knows of a better, or different way to get this done, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Is there a place to actually get help from Ford or Lincoln about smaller matters like this?

[ntrlsur]

OK, now that I'm done venting, hopefully, here's some useful information. The problem with the USB and the AV not showing up in the infotainment display to the right of the speedometer can be fixed by just hitting the left button and then going back with the right button ( on the steering wheel).

 

I was also having problem getting album art to display when playing mp3's from a memory stick. After a lot of testing it appears the only way to do it is to create a separate folder for each artist. Place your music in the corresponding folder along with the album art. Then you have to re-name the album art in each folder to "folder.jpg". Unfortunately, this means that even though you may have songs from multilple albums, you can only dislplay one picture for each artist. But I guess it's better than nothing.

 

If anybody knows of a better, or different way to get this done, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Is there a place to actually get help from Ford or Lincoln about smaller matters like this?

 

 

You can embed the album art in the mp3 file. Not sure if that would work but it might help. I picked up an 8 gig ipod nano from a local pawn shop for 60 bucks and i let itunes manage the album art. It works nicely..

[wilsons66604]

I was also having problem getting album art to display when playing mp3's from a memory stick. After a lot of testing it appears the only way to do it is to create a separate folder for each artist. Place your music in the corresponding folder along with the album art. Then you have to re-name the album art in each folder to "folder.jpg". Unfortunately, this means that even though you may have songs from multilple albums, you can only dislplay one picture for each artist. But I guess it's better than nothing.

 

If anybody knows of a better, or different way to get this done, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Is there a place to actually get help from Ford or Lincoln about smaller matters like this?

OMG! That sounds painful. (I've got over 5000 songs in my collection.)

Just buy a real mp3 device and retire the USB stick

[Tulsa]

OK, now that I'm done venting, hopefully, here's some useful information. The problem with the USB and the AV not showing up in the infotainment display to the right of the speedometer can be fixed by just hitting the left button and then going back with the right button ( on the steering wheel).

 

I was also having problem getting album art to display when playing mp3's from a memory stick. After a lot of testing it appears the only way to do it is to create a separate folder for each artist. Place your music in the corresponding folder along with the album art. Then you have to re-name the album art in each folder to "folder.jpg". Unfortunately, this means that even though you may have songs from multilple albums, you can only dislplay one picture for each artist. But I guess it's better than nothing.

 

If anybody knows of a better, or different way to get this done, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Is there a place to actually get help from Ford or Lincoln about smaller matters like this?

 

Get an iMac, copy your music over to your usb stick and you're good to go.

[linkstur]

5600 in my collection, and yes, it's very painful. I used Media Player (ver 12.0.xxx) that comes with Windows 7. Has more features than the version on XP. Gets album art from the internet.....ONE SONG AT A TIME. But, when you're done, it works fine....on the computer. The same stuff doesn't work in the car. Even editing the text of the song and artist was a chore because for some reason, SYNC doesn't look at the file name, nor does it look at the meta tags (in properties). It goes to some unknown location to get this information and can only be edited in Media Player. Lots of songs had all caps or all lower case and it was driving me crazy to figure out why. I'm not saying that it can't be done with a third party program, but I was just trying to use stock Microsoft software. (Since SYNC was a MS product)

 

I wish ntrlsur would elaborate on just how you embed the album art in the mp3 file. That's what I'm trying to do, buy maybe just going about it the wrong way. When you use your external mp3 player, can you still use voice commands to select tracks and artists? Does the album art still show on the touch screen?

 

I think what's pissing me off the most here is that although I'm complaining about some trivial issues, there's no place to turn for a definative answer. There's no instructions how to use some of this crap and when something doesn't work, there's no troubleshooting guides. The dealers have no clue how any of this stuff works and there's no motivation for them to learn. They just want to make a sale. And lots of people on this forum have significantly larger issues than I do. I can only imagine their frustration.

 

Bottom line, new cars shouldn't outta be like this.

[linkstur]

Get an iMac, copy your music over to your usb stick and you're good to go.

 

That's kinda funny that Apple works better on Microsoft than Microsoft does.

 

Can't do it, though. Too much DRM on the "I" products.

[wilsons66604]

.

Can't do it, though. Too much DRM on the "I" products.

HUH?

My music collection isn't DRM'd and I use iTunes

[ballerpnc]

Hi all........i got my 2011 Edge on Oct. 29, 2010.........everything has worked fine until the last week or so.......I have one problem............when I do the my Sync turn by turn directions, it asks me of course for the city, state, and address, which I give and it takes fine..............then, it starts to download, and before the download of the directions is complete, it disconnects and says unable to download, would you like to retry? I say yes, it tries again, and fails again. I chatted online with a Ford Sync rep. and he suggested I do a Master Reset and Soft Reset on my cell phone. I tried this, but got the same results. FYI, I have a Blackberry Bold 9700 and my carrier is AT&T.............can anyone help? Do I need to get some kind of an update from the dealer? Or is there another way? Any help would be appreciated....thanks!

[curlysir]

Have had the latest updates and system has been relative trouble free. But out of the blue my clock was off by an hour 2 days ago. I have the clock set to use GPS and had not changed a thing. I can get it to display the correct time by turning off daylight savings time, but like I said I did not change anything before the clock decided to be an hour off.

 

Gremlins I guess!

[ntrlsur]

5600 in my collection, and yes, it's very painful. I used Media Player (ver 12.0.xxx) that comes with Windows 7. Has more features than the version on XP. Gets album art from the internet.....ONE SONG AT A TIME. But, when you're done, it works fine....on the computer. The same stuff doesn't work in the car. Even editing the text of the song and artist was a chore because for some reason, SYNC doesn't look at the file name, nor does it look at the meta tags (in properties). It goes to some unknown location to get this information and can only be edited in Media Player. Lots of songs had all caps or all lower case and it was driving me crazy to figure out why. I'm not saying that it can't be done with a third party program, but I was just trying to use stock Microsoft software. (Since SYNC was a MS product)

 

I wish ntrlsur would elaborate on just how you embed the album art in the mp3 file. That's what I'm trying to do, buy maybe just going about it the wrong way. When you use your external mp3 player, can you still use voice commands to select tracks and artists? Does the album art still show on the touch screen?

 

I think what's pissing me off the most here is that although I'm complaining about some trivial issues, there's no place to turn for a definative answer. There's no instructions how to use some of this crap and when something doesn't work, there's no troubleshooting guides. The dealers have no clue how any of this stuff works and there's no motivation for them to learn. They just want to make a sale. And lots of people on this forum have significantly larger issues than I do. I can only imagine their frustration.

 

Bottom line, new cars shouldn't outta be like this.

 

 

Check out http://lifehacker.com/#!397258/find-and-embed-album-art-in-your-mp3-collection It is a nice write up of how to embed album art into the mp3 file itself. I use my ipod nano and SYNC picks up the album art from the ipod database. Once indexing is done then everything works great voice commands and browsing from the touch screen. It has taken me weeks to organize my music collection properly. I have about 120K tracks total in my collection and all the diffrent naming was driving me nuts. I used a program called picard to update the metadata of music files. I did it for piece of mind so when i am searching for files the naming convention is all the same..

[ntrlsur]

That's kinda funny that Apple works better on Microsoft than Microsoft does.

 

Can't do it, though. Too much DRM on the "I" products.

 

 

If you purchase music through Itunes or Amazon you can download DRM free mp3s now for the most part. I still buy CD's and import them into my collection unless its a hard to find CD then i buy from Itunes or amazon.