I am having a similar issue to many here on the forums, but with slightly different symptoms. I did quite a bit of searching in these forums before deciding to post a new topic.

My self-installed AVIC-F700BT ran fine for over 3 months now. I do not have a backup camera, but I did do the wiring harness trick so I can use the GPS while driving.

Yesterday evening, as I was leaving my neighborhood, I noticed the screen was black. I pulled over and restarted my car. The splash screen came up, but after the standard 20 seconds, the unit went black. The screen, the buttons... everything. Of course, like everyone, I can still hear the fan.

I have tried waiting a few minutes and pressing the buttons, but I can't get any response out of the unit.

I have tried hitting the reset button. The unit resets, and the same Start Up Screen > Nothing issue occurs. I have tried holding the reset button down different lengths of time, with the same result.

I have tried to reset the unit into "safe mode", but hitting the reset button and the eject button simultaneously. The unit resets, the buttons pulsate quickly while the startup/splash screen shows and it stays in this state indefinitely. I have let it sit for several minutes and the splash screen stays on and the buttons pulse. I tried to learn more about safe mode, but my searches in this forum on that subject did not yield good results. Where can I find more info on safe mode and different types of resets?

I have taken the unit completely out and disconnected everything, rechecking my connections as I reinstalled it.

My hope is that if I could only get to some sort of screen other than the splash screen, I could adjust the backup camera setting and everything would be fine.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I leave on a 600+ mile road trip in the morning.

Update: I found the wiki and the information on how to enter test mode. When I boot with my test mode SD card in, I see the Windows CE come on after the splash screen. I has a "copying files" progress bar, but the unit always goes black before the files are finished copying. I've let it sit for several minutes and tried restarting it several times with the same result...

i am having the same issue. I called pioneer and the tech said that this is becoming a common issue with units that have the wiring harness to do video bypass. He said its likely that the main software is going bad and that i should just send the unit into service. I can still play cds so im going to let the screen b black til i cant tolerate it anymore or until some one has answer. IF you get any other details let me know please.

i am having the same issue. I called pioneer and the tech said that this is becoming a common issue with units that have the wiring harness to do video bypass. He said its likely that the main software is going bad and that i should just send the unit into service. I can still play cds so im going to let the screen b black til i cant tolerate it anymore or until some one has answer. IF you get any other details let me know please.

If your unit is still working just a black screen you might be a victim of the backup camera grimlin. Do a search for the backup camer automajically turning itself on and see if that fixes it. Good luck

i do not have backup camera installed or even turned on but i will look into it

So I pulled the unit out and sent it back to Pioneer in early June when this originally happened. They flashed the memory and sent it back to me in 1 week. I reinstalled and everything was fine... for a few months.

Then, last weekend while I was on another road trip, the screen went black again!!!

While my wife and I were making the 600 mile drive back home, we had no GPS or radio. Then, all of a sudden, I got a call on my cell phone and it was ringing through the head unit. The screen was still black, but when I answered from the phone, the call came through on the speakers just like normal.

Then, a few hundred miles further, I was mashing the eject, map, and menu buttons in frustration when the screen just magically turned back on! It stayed on and worked properly for a while, but went back to turning off shortly after the splash screen once we stopped for gas.

Since then, I have had some infrequent success with waiting a few minutes, then hitting the buttons and the unit comes back to life. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I've also held in the reset button for 10 seconds... The unit boots up and then goes black, but just after a hard reset like this, I seem to have better results getting the screen to come back on after waiting and hitting a few buttons. I do loose all of my presets doing this, and also have to reset my input 1 to iPod.

Anyone have a better fix for this issue yet? I'd rather not have to yank my head unit out and send it back to Pioneer every 3 months or so...

I am also having the same issues. I've tried to reinstall 2.0, nothing. Tried to update to 3.0, nothing. I'm to the point where I'm going to send it back in, I don't know where to go from here.

Ok, so I had a little progress...

After holding in the reset button for a few seconds while driving, then letting it boot up and go black, and waiting a while and pressing the eject and map buttons (no particular sequence), I got the screen to come back on again. This time I dug around in the settings, and I noticed that the "Backup Camera" was not set to yes or no. I don't have a camera installed, so I selected No.

That seemed to solve the main issue with the screen going black. It wasn't until sometime later, after restarting the car several times to make sure it was really working, that I noticed there were no voice commands. I click the main knob, and I never get a voice prompt. I went into the settings, and none of the related settings are available. In particular, I couldn't see the area where you change the iPod voice cataloging mode.

This morning, at a few traffic lights, I was digging through the settings screens and I saw that under the Language button, both the Main Language and the Speech Language had a bunch of square characters in them. I changed the Main Language to English, and it rebooted and the setting stayed.

When I go to select English to be the Speech Language, the unit resets before I can make a selection and the setting remains the same. I tried 3 times, but each time, when I click the current Speech Language (which is a bunch of box-like characters) the system resets itself.

Any ideas?