Blank screen every morning

[JRT]

Well this is ridiculous, my center screen now consistently is blank and locked up every morning or after sitting for a day at work. Reset has to be done 2-3 times and while all this nonsense goes on the HVAC controls are locked. Also the walk away locks isn't working either.

Have a June 15 appointment, earliest possible, and am less then confirmed Woody Anderson in Huntsville will be able to do anything.

Seems all the OTA updates have been happening. Anyone else have a consistent issues like these?

Sponsored

 

[Kabish]

I got the black screen this morning, after just picking it up from the dealer. After about 2ish minutes it finally came on though.

I’ll have to pay closer attention to see if the walk away lock is working. It works, just tested.

 

[Ford Motor Company]

Well this is ridiculous, mybcenter screen now consistently is blank and locked up every morning or after sitting for a day at work. Reset has to be done 2-3 times and while all this nonsense goes on the HVAC controls are locked. Also the walk away locks isn't working either.

Have a June 15 appointment, earliest possible, and am less then confirmed Woody Anderson in Huntsville will be able to do anything.

Seems all the OTA updates have been happening. Anyone else have a consistent issues like these?

Good morning! If you send over a DM with your VIN and Ford dealer info, I can look into your display concerns on my end.

 

[Msnwcpa]

@Kabish , @JRT is this the instrument cluster above the steering? Where speedometer is.

 

[JRT]

No this is the center display

 

[Kabish]

Ya it was my big center display. Mine started up eventually though, so far it's just done it this morning, but I just got my car back yesterday.

 

[macchiaz-o]

I started keeping a log. Sounds like you two have a lot more occurrences than me:

Date	Drive event	What was on screen	Recovery
roughly 4/25/2023	leaving work	frozen UI	restart via steering wheel
4/29	first drive of day	all black	restart via steering wheel
5/1	first drive of day	all black	restart via steering wheel
5/8	leaving work	frozen UI	restart via steering wheel
5/19	first drive of day	frozen UI	restarted on its own after 60-90 seconds

It's possible it will always restart on its own, but 60-90 seconds is a long time and I'm not generally that patient, especially when I'm trying to get to work or flee from work.

I reported the issue to the EAP team every single time... Of course I haven't heard back from them at all. I'll continue sending them diagnostic logs.

On 5/19, I also tried using the voice prompt button on the steering wheel to adjust the HVAC since I couldn't do so from the touch screen... That did not work. So when the SYNC display is frozen, the voice controls are also unavailable. At that point, the only HVAC control you'd have is probably opening or closing windows, or turning on max defrost since that has a dedicated button.

Also when SYNC is frozen like this, you can't use the reverse camera at all.

 

[DevSecOps]

I've seen this twice on my car, if memory recalls. Both times were at least 9-12 months ago and I haven't seen it since.

 

[macchiaz-o]

I've seen this twice on my car, if memory recalls. Both times were at least 9-12 months ago and I haven't seen it since.

Yeah I think before this recent string, I'd only seen this happen maybe once, ever?? I can't remember for sure.

I did have a different issue though, where SYNC would just panic restart anywhere from 2-20 minutes into my drive. It mostly happened during the summer of 2022, and maybe a bit in summer 2021. I'm hoping it doesn't continue doing that this summer. (APIM was replaced in January so it'll be interesting to see if that helped.)

Would love to figure out what's causing these recent freezes, which happen moments after starting the vehicle. I've been turning off myTrends because it sure feels like that might be causing it... (seems like it pops up before the freeze, or right after SYNC restarts). But it keeps turning itself back on on subsequent drives (argh!). The other weird symptom is that the Connected Vehicle Features list is almost always empty when I try to expand it. Both things feel like server-side and/or vehicle-to-server ICD defects.

My car's still on Power-Up 4.1.1 although a dealer did a few updates to it in March so it has the more recent SYNC UI.

 

[Maquis]

Mine started doing this just the past couple weeks. I’d guess 25% of the time. I also occasionally now get a white background in the radio app even though I have the screen set to dark.
Sync reset always fixes it. I’ve never waited to see if it would come back on its own.

 

[Monke]

This happen to me when the car parked outside and hot. It is not just HVAC that will not work. It is also a back up camera and that is a safety issue. The screen eventually comes back after sitting in a car for several minutes. @JRT you are in a good hand since you got Ford attention. I have been tagging Ford for a while now about this issue without a luck. This seems to be a common issue based on several posts here. Since this is a safety issue, I am considering report the issue to NHTSA.

 

[Mike G]

I would posit that it might be load shedding due to an undercharged or failing 12V battery. It's possible that the BMS learned values need to be reset and that wouldn't hurt to try in any event.

The steps have been posted elsewhere so I won't repeat them here. But I'd give that a try first thing to see if anything improves.

 

[sci_goat]

Happened to me for the first time yesterday leaving from work. I thought it moght be overheating of the center screen, but I had been using a sunshade, so when I felt it, and it was not hot.

 

[Ford Motor Company]

Mine started doing this just the past couple weeks. I’d guess 25% of the time. I also occasionally now get a white background in the radio app even though I have the screen set to dark.
Sync reset always fixes it. I’ve never waited to see if it would come back on its own.

Hi there! Will you send us a message with your VIN and your local Ford dealer? I can look into things on my end.

 

[Ford Motor Company]

Ya it was my big center display. Mine started up eventually though, so far it's just done it this morning, but I just got my car back yesterday.

Hey there! Can you please send me a DM with your VIN and dealer name/location so I can look into this blank screen concern for you? I'd be happy to see what I can do to assist!

Sponsored