Lowrance Elite 5mHD stopped working - the answer

[smacksman]

My month old Lowrance Elite 5mHD one day stopped at the splash screen and went no further. Annoyingly, all the buttons stopped working, even the light/off button. Had to kill the 12v supply.
Note; Lowrance telephone support do not work weekends. The website is useless.

On Monday the answer.
Power off. Press and hold the +-/man overboard buttons together. Make yourself comfortable as you will be pressing them for a long time.
Then press the Light/on button for three seconds and release. (why call it 'light'? Why not 'on/off'. Bizarre)
Keep holding down the +/- buttons till a beep is heard. No engine running or you will not hear the very faint beep.
Release the +/- keys and wait - a long time.
Don't go away because if it does start it wierdly asks if you want to go into demo mode. If you don't say No quickly it goes off into demo mode and is useless and you have to power off, press +/-, etc. etc. all over again.
When I asked the Lowrance help man why they didn't put this 'workarouind' in the user manual he replied that several hundred people had said the same thing!
Whoever wrote the software for this kit should be shot.
Pity, because it is cheap; it has charts for the US and Bahamas; and when it works it does its job.