EYEL1NER

Around Thanksgiving I received an email from the GM Nav guys about buying the latest map update. There was some promotion involving free shipping and free physical map but I decided to jump on it because I was tired of POIs that had closed down being on there or new roads not showing up (every time I go to VA Beach for vacation it is a headache to get around due to a couple new-ish roads). So I bought the map update with the intention of updating when I got back to the country again.

I am now back home and for good, so I decided to update the maps on a long drive to Columbia today. I inserted the flash drive containing the update per the instructions and it ran for 50 minutes with zero interruptions. Afterwards it did give a prompt saying that some file was missing or something but the instructions provided with the map updates said that was normal and to overlook it. The system restarted and as I was driving at the time, I entered my destination when it came back online. It found where I was and where I wanted to go and everything looked good.

Fast forward a couple hours later and I am on my way back from Columbia. I have my home set as a destination and am using the satellite radio. I decided I wanted to make a call, so I pressed the voice command button on the wheel. The volume muted on the radio for a second, there was no prompt to begin talking, and the radio's sound returned. I tried again; same thing. I tried holding the button and that did not work either. I began some simple troubleshooting when I returned home.

-The car had been shut off since the map update occurred but I went ahead and powered off and started the car again.
-Nothing had changed with my phone recently (iPhone 6+ running most recent iteration of iOS) but I went ahead and closed all apps and did a full power cycle of the phone, verifying that it disconnected from the car's Bluetooth and reconnected upon the phone booting back up.
-I swapped from the radio to a CD, and then tried pausing the CD. When the CD was not paused, it showed that it was pausing during that brief moment when I would press the voice prompt button and then unpause after a second or so.
-I cycled through all settings and navigation setting specifically to see if anything had changed regarding the voice commands. I went to the voice command options from the main menu and toggled a couple settings off and then on while testing the voice command button.

Nothing seemed to work. I can't say with 100% certainty that the map update broke something with the voice command functionality but it was the only change or update made to the phone and car since the last time I used the voice commands so the map update does seem like a potential culprit. I will try again tomorrow and see what happens but I am not hopeful that it will just start working again.

One thing I did not try, and it is because I am so hesitant to use such a "last-resort" option with any piece of equipment, is reset to factory defaults. If I were to do that, what gets reset? I imagine the maps, the favorited radio stations, the seat recall settings, volume settings... I guess the paired Bluetooth items would be lost and need to be resynched after. But is everything completely reset? Do the miles reflect 0 at that point? Or are we just looking at MyLink features that are restored to default?
If I did reset and the voice commands worked, I assume the best next step would be to update the maps again and see if it borks the voice commands. I am just hesitant to even reset because of the possibility that the voice commands still might not work afterwards and then I have to go in and customize everything the way it was before for no reason, wasted time and effort.

Any suggestions or advice?

blue-impala

A reset will not do anything to the maps, it will just set the settings to default selections. You will not have to reload the maps again if you reset the settings. Mileage will be unaffected. You may want to pull the fuse for the system and let it completely reboot itself. It's not that much time and effort.

One question, did the instructions say that the update could be performed while the car was running and being driven ?

EYEL1NER

Yes, it did say it could be performed while the vehicle was running and being driven and that nav and weather would not be functional during the update. The top and bottom of the instruction page had warnings saying not to turn the vehicle off or remove the thumb drive while the update was in progress, yet the actual text in the middle of the instructions stated that the car could be turned off and the update would resume once the car was started again.
It said it would take 50 minutes, which is about how long the drive was going to take, but that confusion over whether the car could be shut off or not already had me planning on telling my wife when we got to Columbia "Okay, go ahead and start shopping, I'll be in when the update finishes" if it was not complete when we arrived.

EYEL1NER

It was raining yesterday and I didn't make it out of the house but I tried it out first thing this morning. Upon getting in the car and beginning driving, I pressed the steering wheel voice command button. A message appeared in the DIC saying that it could not start. I realized that the phone may not have synced yet but a moment later it said it connected to the phone so I tried again. It gave the same message saying something along the lines of 'voice commands are unable to start.' Which is weird, because it was a different message from the usual one saying that it isn't ready.
I waited a minute or two and pressed the button and it ended up working. There is an audio delay now that is a lot longer than before after pressing the end/terminate/cancel/whatever button on the wheel. It seems to last three or so seconds now whereas before it was nigh-instantaneous.
Oh well, maybe that will iron itself out as well.