2004 Escalde Navigation Buttons Not Responding

[srowley]

Hi - I have a 2004 Escalade with factory navigation (joystick, not touch screen). What happens is that the buttons sometimes do not

respond to being pushed (while in navigation or radio mode). The steering wheel controls and the volume and joystick still work fine. After a while they will begin to work again. I called Cadillac and they said that the laser was probably

dirty and to get a cleaning disk (the map data seems to get read fine

though). I cleaned the unit, but the problem persists. Sometimes

the buttons work and sometimes they don't. It is definitely not a button problem - it feels like the software assignments of the buttons are not being loaded by whatever operating system is in there.

 

Yesterday while all the buttons were working I removed the nav disc. The buttons continued to work for the rest of the day, but this morning they did not. This seems to eliminate the disk and drive as part of the problem.

 

I tried disconnecting the battery for several hours hoping to reset the system - no luck. Could there be another way to reset the nav op sys?

 

I have searched everywhere and can not find anyone with this problem or a solution - very frustrating!

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated - thanks in advance!

 

Sean

[DofD]

I wouldn't rule out that it's a physical problem with the buttons. I've seen many buttons of all different type have flaky operation as they start to deteriorate. I would put less priority on the software not configuring the buttons. I would venture a guess that if the OS didn't configure the buttons, it was because it didn't detect that any buttons were there, which would then relate to a high probability that there is a hardware problem with the buttons.

 

Of course there is no real way to prove or disprove this. Also I don't think the buttons are really repairable.