TomTom navigation units hit by worldwide outage caused by “leap year” bug

Owners of the newest range of TomTom in-car GPS units may be experiencing difficulties getting a basic GPS signal on their nav unit after a software bug hit the “GO LIVE” range of units this week.

The issue began around March 31st and according to TomTom the is caused “by a ‘leap year’ bug in the software of the GPS receiver provided by a third party”.

EFTM was made aware of the bug yesterday by a twitter follower Greg Scroope:

Greg’s wife had a newer model Go Live TomTom system and was getting no GPS. TomTom Australia had confirmed to Greg via phone support that they were aware of the issue and were working on a fix.

Potentially affected navigation devices are: Start 20/25, Via 120/125, Via LIVE 120/125, GO LIVE 820/825, GO LIVE 1000/1005/1005 World.

Fortunately the fix arrived today, with TomTom telling EFTM “Some customers have been experiencing GPS positioning issues since 31st March. The issue is caused by a ‘leap year’ bug in the software of the GPS receiver provided by a third party.  A software update fixing the issue is being made available to customers via MyTomTom. We advise customers to go to  www.tomtom.com/386 to check if their product is impacted and to get simple instructions about how to update their device.”

We’re also told that users who cannot get to a PC and are directly affected (in their cars) could restart the unit for a temporary fix.

All users will be required to perform the update for ongoing usability.

It’s a long time since the Y2K bug was big news, so it’s interesting to know the intricacies of our calendars are still causing headaches for software developers.

The support details and information on the fix are available at TomTom’s website