Kenwood DDX7018BT Slow boot

[86B]

First time Kenwood user there and picked up a second hand DDX7018BT.
The boot up to the player screen seems quick and Bluetooth audio connects fast but the touch screen and buttons do not respond until a good 4 - 5mins after. Is this normal for such slow start up response?

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

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[HardofWhoring]

No. How good of a deal did you get?

 

[86B]

No. How good of a deal did you get?

I got it for about 60 bucks out of a car that is going to be scrapped. I only checked it if it boots up and the player screen loaded in about 45 second. To be fair once it is fully booted up it is quite snappy and responsive.

Could it be wiring issue? Maybe a bad ground?
How do you do a hard reset on one of these Kenwood units? I have read some online site that says hold the eject and volume down button while pressing the reset button. Is that the correct way?

 

[86B]

An update.
I followed a youtube video on how to do a soft reset the headunit from another model but had the same interface as mine. The reset option is buried in the settings menu and it is called "Initialise" in case someone comes across this thread in the future. The full boot up time has drastically shorten. Now it takes about a minute to a minute and a half for controls to be fully functional. Still would like to have it quicker so i'm going to try a firmware update to see if that helps it boot up quicker, if not i can live with this boot up speed.

 

[audiobaun 5,000+ posts]

I got it for about 60 bucks out of a car that is going to be scrapped. I only checked it if it boots up and the player screen loaded in about 45 second. To be fair once it is fully booted up it is quite snappy and responsive.

Could it be wiring issue? Maybe a bad ground?
How do you do a hard reset on one of these Kenwood units? I have read some online site that says hold the eject and volume down button while pressing the reset button. Is that the correct way?

Just remove power for 15 min and hook it back up should place it back to nominal setting

 

[86B]

Just remove power for 15 min and hook it back up should place it back to nominal setting

Didn't really help because I had the problem the first boot i installed the headunit and the headunit was unplugged for a week before that. I still remember it retained memory of previous owner's setting and saved bluetooth connection.

 

[audiobaun 5,000+ posts]

Didn't really help because I had the problem the first boot i installed the headunit and the headunit was unplugged for a week before that. I still remember it retained memory of previous owner's setting and saved bluetooth connection.

The board may have collected some Moisture/Corrosion and gotten damaged from sitting

 

[86B]

The board may have collected some Moisture/Corrosion and gotten damaged from sitting

It may have I am not sure, but If it is physical damage why did a soft reset make a difference to the boot up speed? I am still hoping it can be solved by software update. Fingers crossed.

 

[audiobaun 5,000+ posts]

It may have I am not sure, but If it is physical damage why did a soft reset make a difference to the boot up speed? I am still hoping it can be solved by software update. Fingers crossed.

If I only had an answer for that one Id deff make a honest one.LOL. Excellent question for sure. I have had some of the same issues with purchasing a used amplifier that would come on for a bit and slowely drain back down and no power and to find that by opening it up and finding a couple corroded solder connections on the board of a transformer and poor connection due to decay. I had to clean it on both sides and solder new joints/connections and tested it out later and fixed the issue. The corrosion was due to poor storage exposed to moisture and probably stored in a garage environment or of the same for very long period of time rather than indoors in a dry temperature controlled environment or got wet in a flooded vehicle possibly and never dried out properly or of the same? Only an assumption but a very quite possibility. Who knows?? You may have gotten a great deal and with the firmware update , you may get it working as it should? Deff worth a shot man!! Let us know how it does. Pics are always nice of before and after

 

[86B]

If I only had an answer for that one Id deff make a honest one.LOL. Excellent question for sure. I have had some of the same issues with purchasing a used amplifier that would come on for a bit and slowely drain back down and no power and to find that by opening it up and finding a couple corroded solder connections on the board of a transformer and poor connection due to decay. I had to clean it on both sides and solder new joints/connections and tested it out later and fixed the issue. The corrosion was due to poor storage exposed to moisture and probably stored in a garage environment or of the same for very long period of time rather than indoors in a dry temperature controlled environment or got wet in a flooded vehicle possibly and never dried out properly or of the same? Only an assumption but a very quite possibility. Who knows?? You may have gotten a great deal and with the firmware update , you may get it working as it should? Deff worth a shot man!! Let us know how it does. Pics are always nice of before and after

An update.
So now that I have updated both the application and system firmware I have not noticed any improvements from the 1 to 2 minutes boot time.

Sad but I think I stumbled onto the problem that is keeping it from normal boot time. I have noticed that this problem only occurs when I first start the unit after it has been off power for a while, if I start the unit and let it run the slow boot till normal and then restart the unit the unit, it is responsive as soon as the application is loaded (20 - 30 seconds from Kenwood splash screen). It also works like that if I shut off the car and restart after about a minute i get the same responsive 20 - 30 second boot time.

It is almost like after powering off a while the unit reverts back to first boot mode but if the unit is restarted within a time frame the unit goes into quick boot mode (I did not test how long that time limit is). If there is even such thing because I have gone through all he menus in the settings and there isn't an option to choose boot modes.

I'm not expert but MAYBE a capacitor is faulty. It should charge and hold charge for a much longer time which tells the unit it should boot in quick boot mode. Since the capacitor is losing charge very quickly the unit is doing a first boot instead of the quick boot that it should be in. Again this is just a wild guess.

Now I'm contemplating if I should remove the head unit and take it apart to see if any of the circuits look damaged, not that I know what to look for really or just leave it be and live with the sluggish boot time.

 

[audiobaun 5,000+ posts]

An update.
So now that I have updated both the application and system firmware I have not noticed any improvements from the 1 to 2 minutes boot time.

Sad but I think I stumbled onto the problem that is keeping it from normal boot time. I have noticed that this problem only occurs when I first start the unit after it has been off power for a while, if I start the unit and let it run the slow boot till normal and then restart the unit the unit, it is responsive as soon as the application is loaded (20 - 30 seconds from Kenwood splash screen). It also works like that if I shut off the car and restart after about a minute i get the same responsive 20 - 30 second boot time.

It is almost like after powering off a while the unit reverts back to first boot mode but if the unit is restarted within a time frame the unit goes into quick boot mode (I did not test how long that time limit is). If there is even such thing because I have gone through all he menus in the settings and there isn't an option to choose boot modes.

I'm not expert but MAYBE a capacitor is faulty. It should charge and hold charge for a much longer time which tells the unit it should boot in quick boot mode. Since the capacitor is losing charge very quickly the unit is doing a first boot instead of the quick boot that it should be in. Again this is just a wild guess.

Now I'm contemplating if I should remove the head unit and take it apart to see if any of the circuits look damaged, not that I know what to look for really or just leave it be and live with the sluggish boot time.

Id live with it.Run it until it fails.Its not like you paid top $ for it.This will give you some time maybe to save some funds and find a deal for under $200 bucks. October there may be some sales going on and if it last until Xmas holiday sales? Maybe you can find a great deal? its a hit or miss grabbing an HU out of the Junk Yard ya know. the Heat, Dust, rain, cold weather ? I mean?? I wouldnt expect anything to work half the time. its a 50/50 chance with any electronics from a yard man.

 

[dragon.breath 10+ year member]

Are you 100% sure that the red and yellow wires are not reversed. Because this sounds like a problem of not retaining the full time power while the key is off.

 

[86B]

Id live with it.Run it until it fails.Its not like you paid top $ for it.This will give you some time maybe to save some funds and find a deal for under $200 bucks. October there may be some sales going on and if it last until Xmas holiday sales? Maybe you can find a great deal? its a hit or miss grabbing an HU out of the Junk Yard ya know. the Heat, Dust, rain, cold weather ? I mean?? I wouldnt expect anything to work half the time. its a 50/50 chance with any electronics from a yard man.

Yeah I think I'm just going to leave it, it isn't that bad and the loading time is just a minor inconvenience.
After all i only paid 60 bucks for it. lol

 

[86B]

Are you 100% sure that the red and yellow wires are not reversed. Because this sounds like a problem of not retaining the full time power while the key is off.

To be honest I am not sure.

The car is second hand and the previous owner already had an aftermarket single DIN head unit installed. I just went it and color matched the harness to the ones old one. The bad thing is the previous install snipped off the OEM harness connector so I do not know if they are correctly installed but the older head unit didn't seem to have any problems at all.

I will swap the red and yellow wires to see if the problem gets solved. Thank you for the suggestion.

 

[86B]

Final update.

So I finally found time to take apart the dash and swap the yellow and red wires as per Dragon Breath suggested. Turns out this isn't the solution but something strange also happened at the same time. Swapped the wires, started it up and the initial first boot setup screen popped up, I set it up like before but instead of having unresponsive screen/buttons it was working right away. I was really excited as I thought this has fixed the slow boot. I put everything back together and the next couple times I drove the car it would go into the setup screen. It was at the point I knew it was wired incorrectly but with that being said the screen and buttons would function as soon as it loaded.

This drove me insane because now I have to pick my poison. Deal with the setup screen every time the head-unit starts but boot time is very short OR revert back to previous wiring setup with the slow boot but I do not have to deal with the initial first boot setup screen every single time.

I made my decision and went with the slow boot as that has me doing nothing except wait a minute or two to boot. I swapped the wires back to what I had originally and started it up but this time something is different. The damn thing now just works as it should. Boots up very quick and screen/button is responsive as soon as it is loaded up ( 20 - 25 seconds). It now for some unknown reason just works like normal, it is almost like the head-unit is working after I disconnected it and triggered a full reset.

I think this is the case of just try to turn it off and on again and see if it helps and it did. I has been a couple days and still working like it should. That's the good news, the bad new is now it feels like the speakers are in desperate need of an upgrade.