this unit is the biggest fucking turd i have ever used. i've been trying to fix it for 2 weeks with no avail. to be honest, it is SHIT straight from the box. slow, gps is garbage, and the annoyingly loud beep followed by a massive LAG while navigating. before i got this unit i was a HUUUUGE fan of pioneer. it was the only deck i would buy and the only brand i have ever used in EVERY vehicle i have ever had. but after paying the rediculous retail price for a POS like this.... i will never buy pioneer again.

i used to think that pioneer meant top of the line products and features. if this is the best that human kind can come up with.... we are in BIG big trouble.

ive had mine since december and it was working fine last night, got in the car this morning and i get boot up screen for 10 seconds then black like everyone else. mines still under the 2 year warranty so now i dont know whether to send it back or try the restore that seems to have been mentioned.

has everyone that has done the restore not had any problems since?

also a link to the walkthrough of the restore for the 2.0 software would be greatly appreciated. im pretty new to the forum and am still trying to figure stuff out.

I want to thank all of the contributers to this board. And Pioneer can suck it, they need to take a hard look at their tech support if they're going to release products that have problems like this one.

My problem, specifically, was that the system would boot, show the splash screen, and then shut down after 20 seconds. The reason why this issue is so damning is that if you boot into testmode, or the diagnostic mode (up,up,down, menu, left right I think), the thing still crashes in 20-40 seconds.

As someone else on this forum mentioned, you can seemingly get the update from pioneer to run without the crash occuring. Afterwards, the system still does not work, but it seems to be stabalized somewhat. It boots, and locks up on the splash screen. At least it did on the second time for me...It should be noted that it still crashed in diagnostic a couple of times...I had to make 2 attempts at this. Be careful of writing anything while it is unstable, you're asking for troulbe if you do that.

In short, I installed the update, then did this, steps 1-15: http://avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=25424&p=173551&hilit=+BOOT+AVIC+IN+TEST+MODE#p173551

Again, I am, very grateful to the posters on this forum. Pioneer, wanted me to remove it, and ship it to cali...They spent most of the time talking to me on the various ways they void the warranty...I'll not be buying from them again.

Put me down as another dissatisfied customer. Like everyone else, I thought Pioneer was an excellent product. The F500bt changed my mind. The unit was used for 1 month and the non-boot issue started. The repair guy said it was the battery problem. I finally found the problem. This machine is like all other new electronic toys. IT HAS A SOFT ON AND SOFT OFF and a COMPLETE on AND COMPLETE OFF switch. I simply clicked the darn thing and thought that it was off completely and I was so wrong. The machine was on standby mode hand is draining the battery. As per their stupid CD manual, (why the hell Pioneer does not provide a hard copy of its manual of this darn machine is simply unbelievable, if it were of cost savings.) You have to hold that sucker on/off button and let it to have a HARD OFF. That's the reason why the darn battery was drained everyday. (I did not hardwired it, I just plug it in my lighter plug.) I understand that the home electronics needs a soft switch, but for a mobile unit to have this feature, it is totally an unwise engineering. So, if you have a battery keep dying on you, do the HARD OFF way to turn the machine completely off.