[Cre8tive]

At the beginning of a 3 hour drive to NYC, I looked down and the entire screen over my steering wheel went out last Sunday on my 2013 Volt. Having had my infotainment screen lock up before, I knew that restarting/resetting the Volt might easily correct it, so I did so after stopping for a bite after only a few minutes on the road. Well, that did not work. Nothing operational seemed to be interrupted on the car, including my turn signals and all stalk functions, so I continued on my way.

When I arrived at my hotel in NY, I called OnStar to see if the car had thrown any codes and if OnStar could assist in any way. No codes, they said, and because it was Sunday, there was no one available to assist me further. I did a reset by powering down the Volt (holding the power button down for 10 seconds...tried it again for 20 and 30 seconds, too) but it did not help. I went to my room for the night and returned to try the startup sequence again the next morning. Again, the screen never even blinked. Called OnStar who transferred me to someone from the "Volt Electrical Team" (really?) who had no answers for me either. She told me not to drive the car and that she would have it towed to a local dealer for evaluation and repairs. Given that I was far from my home and on a job that would keep me in NY the rest of the week, I declined and told her I would be driving the car every day until I could get it home and research my options from there. I suggested doing a "hard reset" by detaching the cables to the 12V battery to see if that would take care of it, but she strongly advised against doing that, either (of course).

The car ran fine all week, and I made it home with no issues. While in my garage today, I detached the cables to the 12V battery for 10 - 20 minutes. I reattached the cables, started the car, and everything powered up normally.

Now all I have to do is reprogram all the things lost from the adaptive memory settings. Are there any that I should look for? Are there vital, learned things in the "keep alive memory" that might be lost and would affect the normal function of other modules?

I'll keep the forum informed of how it goes....

 

[voganni]

Glad you were able to get your screen back. That's an expensive piece. When I disconnected my 12 v battery the only thing I had to reset was the clock. All my personalized config settings were retained. Pretty smart car.

 

[Raymondjram]

While I was reading your post, I was thinking about the fuse that poweres the dash illumination. But I saw that the 12VDC reset did the job, so your problem was with the BCM (Body Control Module) which controls the dash illumination (and other items) and shuts it down (with a fade out) after the car is powered off. I have a 2009 Chevy Equinox (see my signature) and I learned about the BCM when I read the factory service manuals.

Next time, search for the fuse that poweres the BCM and remove it instead of disconnecting the 12 VDC battery.

 

[Cre8tive]

Thanks, Raymond. I'll give that a try. It's never happened in the almost 3 years I've owned the car, and I hope it's doesn't start occurring frequently now. I'm glad I didn't have to replace the screen!

 

[Cre8tive]

Just made another 3 hour trip to NY where I worked for a few days. Drove it 10-20 miles every day while there. 3 hour trip back home as well. No issues with the screen or anything else, for that matter.

 

[VoltenRock]

We had the same week, and I also have a 2013. It was the first time ever my screen went down and did not recover. I had my OEM radio "fail" with frequent reboots (eventually replaced), but it never went blank and became unresponsive before. Interesting that we both had it the same week in the same MY. It also never happened again after that one time.