Garmin GPS systems are great if you don’t know how to find your way to an address but their maps often get outdated in a few years as new infrastructure is developed in your city. Many find the $80 update somewhat of a pinch in their pockets so here is a solution for those people!
Using this guide you will be able to update your Garmin GPS system to the latest (2010) map data, all you need is a little bit of patience and careful reading.
The 2011 Map Guide is now up.
What will you need?
- Garmin City Navigator 2010.40 (Method 1) OR 2010.40 Unlocked IMG File (Method 2)
- Garmin MapSource v6.15.7 & MapInstall v3.13.2
- Garmin Unlocker (available here)
- A Garmin GPS device plugged into your PC
Method 1 (Mapsource Install Instructions)
1) Run the setup file named “CNNANT2010Update_ENU.msi” from the “IMG” folder in your downloaded city navigator files.
2) Install the Garmin Mapsource software on your computer.
Note: The 2010.40 update also updates the version of MapInstall on your pc to v3.13.3. Before moving forward, downgrade to v3.13.2 using the following instructions:
- Remove all Mapinstall files the from the Garmin install directory (mostly located at C:\Garmin)
- Download Mapinstall v3.13.2 from the links provided & run the installer
- Launch Mapinstall and sync to device
3) Once the software in step 1 and 2 are installed, run the program named Mapsource from Start > All Programs > Garmin. Mapsource will show you a prompt upon launching it asking to unlock the maps, close this prompt window using the red X on the top right corner.
4) Now click on Utilities > Get Unit ID from the menu bar. The program will take a second and display your device’s unit ID (make sure your GPS is plugged into your computer to get this). Copy this unit # number and write it down elsewhere as a safe measure. Once you have the number written down, close this window.
5) Leave Mapsource running (minimize it) and open the Garmin unlocker you downloaded from the link provided before. Put the Unit ID code you wrote down in step 4 in the top most box of the garmin unlocker thats says “Enter your Unit ID here”.
6) Next, in the ‘Select Map Product‘ field select the last option of ‘custom maps’ and enter 450 when prompted and hit OK. If using the City Navigator North America 2010.20 maps enter 2005. If using the City Navigator North America 2010.30 maps enter 2051. If using the City Navigator North America 2010.40 maps enter 2201.
7) Now click on the Generate button located on the bottom of the window next to the Exit button. This will give you the unlock code, copy this code and keep it somewhere accessible. You can exit out of the unlocker now, its work is done.
8 ) Go back to the Mapsource window and from the Utilities menu and select Manage Map Products. Now click the ‘Unlock Regions’ Tab and press the ‘Add’ button. Paste the code you got in step 7 into the ‘Add Unlock Region’ dialog box’s first field, the second field is optional. Hit OK and you have unlocked the map product.
Now you can close Mapsource.
Note: Before moving foward, navigate to the Garmin folder on your device. An icon for your device will be under My Computer. In the Garmin folder you will find a file named “gmapprom”. Backup this file and then delete it from the Garmin device. If you cannot find the exact same file name, look for the biggest file in that folder (it can be anywhere from 500 MB – 1GB).
Now launch MapInstall from Programs > Garmin
9) Mapinstall will ask you for the regions on the map you want to install, choose your desired regions, hit next and then press Finish.
Depending on the amount of map data you choose to put on, the maps will transfer to your device between 30 mins – 1 hour. Once completed you will have the new 2010 maps on your GPS system, you can also check the maps version on your device via Settings > Maps > Map Info.
Method 2 (Unlocked IMG Instructions)
1. Connect your device to the computer.
2. Go into the Nuvi files and backup the file named “gmapprom.img” to your computer.
3. Delete the “gmapprom.img” file from the device.
4. Copy the unlocked “gmapprom.img” file that you downloaded into the device.
5. Restart your device and check your map info.
Having trouble with unlocking maps? Even with the right Mapsource version?
Mapsource might be causing an issue on your machine.
We have a fix for this :
- Navigate to your garmin installation directory (C:/Garmin/)
- Locate the Mapsource.exe file and rename it to MapsourceOLD.exe
- Download this replacement file, extract the contents and put it in the (C:/garmin) directory
The unlock code should now be accepted.
Want 3D map Data?
The 2010.40 3D Map Data can be found here
Simply drop that file onto your device memory or external memory and your 3D data should be loaded.
Enjoy the savings & drop us a line if you found this helpful. [donate]
By aman, June 13, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Hi i have garmin gps 465 doing up date after go black screen not turn off not going on any help guys thanks
By aman, June 13, 2010 at 6:27 pm
how to reset 465
By Tin, June 14, 2010 at 10:58 am
Thanks for the map~~~!
Toronto, Canada
By Dan, June 14, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Trying to do this for my nuvi 205.
Once I figured out the torrent issue, and got the giant download taken care of I followed all other directions to the letter only to find that I cannot unlock the maps.
I have tried multiple times.
Tried to DL the unlocked file (option #2) but this file has a password created by the uploader.
This sent me back to option #1.
Still cannot unlock the darn maps.
Any ideas?
+++
By lori, June 15, 2010 at 5:00 pm
i have tried this several times but cant get the unlocker to open. everytime i click on it – it just opens a blank web page…???
By eric, June 15, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Dan,
re-read a few of my posts above dealing with ensuring you really are using the correct versions of Garmin MapSource v6.15.7 & MapInstall v3.13.2.
This could be an issue?
…also, the 2011 maps are up, I believe Labrat updated to make the instructions a little easier to follow. Try following the 2011 instructions?
http://www.haklabs.com/2010/ga.....ps-update/
By eric, June 15, 2010 at 8:41 pm
Also Dan,
You could very well be making the same bonehead mistake I did…when you use the Garmen Keygen app make sure you are using the second “Generate” button! (There are two) If not, you will be on a wild goose chase like I was for over an hour scratching my head wondering what Im doing wrong? Come to find out, I was using the wrong key code…which anything tried after that is guaranteed to fail.
By Steve P, June 16, 2010 at 10:10 am
“Run the setup file named “CNNANT2010Update_ENU.msi” from the “IMG” folder in your downloaded city navigator files.”
This setup file is not in my IMG folder…??
By Lorraine, June 16, 2010 at 11:37 am
Is there any way to unlock a map on a Mac???
By Steve P, June 16, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Ok I had a bad download; redownloaded the torrent and everything is ok!
By Guests Olgalbe, June 16, 2010 at 7:55 pm
It works fine on the Nuvi 255w. Read the website first; follow the instructions step by step and you’ll have no problems on this device.
By Ron, June 17, 2010 at 10:25 am
I got through this BUT now the the unit is saying GPS OFF. I have gone into the settings and the GPS is not off. Any ideas?
Thanks
By MikeT, June 19, 2010 at 8:35 am
I have a nuvi 760 with the originla preloaded europe 008 maps. I downloaded teh 2010NT img file and copied it onto a new 4GbHDSC card , inseretd the card, switched on a,d bingo, settings, maps, mapinfo showed two fuiles – the new 2010 maps and teh origoinal 2008 maps, both with a checkbox- I unchecked the 22008 and checked the 2010, and everything worked fine.
I have now got an 8gb SDHC card and copied the same files onto that, plus a whole host of new music( hence the reason for the larger card, but when I insert this card, I can play the music, but the device wont see the new maps- map info only shows the original 2008 maps.
Any ideas???
By lourpn, June 22, 2010 at 9:35 pm
I have the c340. I’m trying to use and SD card because my computer is not recognizing the device. I see that this is an issue with others. Where do you find the option to change from the device to the SD card?
By Andrea, June 22, 2010 at 10:19 pm
No matter what I do, I cannot get this to work. I am trying to install the North American 2010 maps 2010.20 and everything was working as far as unlocking it on my computer and everything. I have followed these instructions to the letter, and as far as my computer is telling me, the maps updated correctly, but when I turn my GPS on, I keep getting that message about not finding any detailed maps, followed by a message that says “Cannot Unlock Maps.” I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but I have a nuvi 200, and I would REALLY appreciate any and all help you can give. My eyes are hurting from staring at search engines and websites all night, trying to find a solution to this problem. Thanks so much!!!!
By Jimmy Crackcorn, June 22, 2010 at 11:00 pm
Worked perfectly. I pulled the dumb move on the keygen, clicked the top “Generate” and kept getting “Map Not Installed”. Thanks for keeping me from giving up in my own stupidity! Great work all! Any chance we can get some unlocks on the red light cameras and other add-ons?
By Ionel, June 23, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Care ma ajuta si pe mine,ca nu descurc cu activarea programului…va rog!!!
By Adriana, June 25, 2010 at 2:25 pm
I have a nuvi 360 and the 3D file doesn’t work for me, i tried both ways and it doesnt work, do i need to do something else?
By Adriana, June 25, 2010 at 2:32 pm
forgot to say, there are other files there named: gmapprom, gmapsupp and gmapbmap. Do I need to delete any of those? ty
By Hammer, June 25, 2010 at 8:25 pm
I just picked up a Garmin Quest 2 from Ebay – the problem is that it is a Toyota specific model, and it won’t let me install the newest firmware. It also has the SafeMode menu taken out so it is ALWAYS on safe mode (killing me!!). Anyone know a hack or way to fix it, force it to take the newer firmware…….?
By eric, June 25, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Adrianna, when you say you “tried both way and it didn’t work”, what exactly do you mean? Where did you have the problems?
You should make a copy of the original “gmapprom” file and store it on your PC somewhere for backup just in case. Then delete the original “gmapprom” file off of your Garmen (make sure to empty recycle bin on your PC for complete deletion off the garmen)
By Dirk Penus, June 26, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Has anyone ever gotten this to work with CN 2011 on a Garmin Oregon? The whole procedure seems to work fine for me, installation, unlocking, everything, until I turn on the Oregon and it displays a button that says “Can’t unlock maps”.
The map is definitely unlocked in MapSource. I can use it there just fine. I also entered the correct device ID (double and triple checked) in the unlocking tool.
By marcela, June 27, 2010 at 12:24 am
Help. I’ve tried doing this so many times. Everything follows to where mapsource shows that it is unlocked but when I try the last step of running mapinstall from program>garmin the map shows as being locked!! any suggestions?
By anthony, June 27, 2010 at 3:05 am
the mapinstall_3132 installer will not open
i get the error:
“This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.”
By Help, June 27, 2010 at 2:31 pm
I get through all the steps and then I try to install the maps with map installer (I downgraded to the correct version) a I get an error that the software program (map install) has a problem and to contact garmin support. Any ideas?
By Joe, June 27, 2010 at 2:48 pm
I’m trying to use method 2 to upgrade a C330 – On the download site there are four files listed do all four need to be downloaded?
By Grv, June 27, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Guys :
Thank you so much, you saved me a 100 bucks which I planned to spend as I was travelling to canada this weekend and I only had US map so far.
This worked perfectly for Nuvi 205 w…for others who would be interested…
Awesome Work, Kudos to you !!
PS will try 2011 one soon
By Joe, June 27, 2010 at 9:30 pm
It appears that only one of the four links is needed. I downloaded all four and they all seemed to decompress into the same img. I purchased a 2Gbyte SD card for $9 and loaded the .img file and put in my c330. Thank’s to resinbelly’s comment about halfway back on these posts his Dec 13 2009 post to be EXACT. It looks like it all works. I have read almost everyone of these posts trying to glean information. I have to say that the instructions are a little bit cryptic. I deal with computers everyday and have made my living with them since 1975. How about spending a few extra minutes writing explanations of what is going on and what to expect instead of XXXX//yyy/map/do dah/ stuff. Not everyone here is a hacker, torrent expert, or even windows conversant – we are just trying to keep from being ripped off – If Garmin charged a reasonable fee say like $15 for a map update – believe me I wouldn’t have wasted 8 hours fooling with this stuff. $70 for an update to a $275 unit(when I bought it) – forget it – I’d buy a new Tom Tom, it’s the principle. I do thank those folks who did come up with this data.
By Antanios, June 28, 2010 at 6:22 am
Thank you very much for the info, very well written…
best regards
By Grv, June 28, 2010 at 12:47 pm
One Question :
Though Everything is working perfectly for me, I lost my GPS Voice when I tried it this morning :p
Is this becasue I didnt update the 3 d data ? When I go and check language selected, it shows me as None….Volume is not an issue…
Can anyone please help ?
thanks.
By polarbear, June 28, 2010 at 7:44 pm
I downloaded City Navigator & extracted the files, yet I can’t find the IMG folder and the file in Step 1. Can anyone help?
Thanks.
By marcela, June 30, 2010 at 10:35 am
This is my step by step update after it wasn’t working for me. First, my gps is a nuvi 200. I tried doing both methods multiple times. I kept getting an error with the 2nd method (by the way, I found the password for the 2nd method file from one of the above posts, it’s haklabs). I even went to the 2011 page to see if that worked and it didn’t. Came back to the 2010 method 1.
I erased all the previously installed programs from my laptop, including mapsource and mapinstall (on some attempts I had left these). I did not download everything as I read the “what will you need?” section. I had done that before. To start, I downloaded bittorrent. Then I downloaded the city navigator torrent file. In torrent I had to manually transfer the city navigator so after going to the file tab, I chose ‘add torrent’ and chose the city navigator I had downloaded before, then I right clicked on it in torrent and chose open containing folder, in this folder I found the “IMG” file, then the CNNANT2010Update_ENU.msi (except my file had a 40 after the word update” and ran it. Then I downloaded Mapsource. Then I opened c:\garmin and erased the mapinstall files that were there (note I did not install mapinstall yet), then I did download Mapinstall. Then I followed all the next steps as noted in the instructions. Also, I did use the 2201 (when it wasn’t working I started to think I was using the wrong code). It all worked after that, just thought I’d break down how it finally worked for me. Thanks haklabs writer for the info!
By Bubbly, June 30, 2010 at 6:54 pm
I am getting a problem. When I go to mapsource. After I have installed everything it says that 2010 is locked and I need a code to unlock. Any helpful tips let me know thanks. When I tried 2011 this did the same exact thing. Marcela I followed yours by the way and I also have a nuvi 200.
By marcela, July 1, 2010 at 12:11 am
bubbly…are you having the issue when you go to mapsource in step 3 or 8? If at step 8, when you hit the unlock regions tab is there anything listed there? try erasing anything that may be listed before hitting add and entering the code you got. Then just keep following the steps until getting to the last step which is running mapinstall, (it may say locked in mapsource but be unlocked when you launch mapinstall). Otherwise, I’m not sure. All I can suggest is try erasing everything you previously installed or downloaded one more time and try again from scratch.
By champ, July 1, 2010 at 9:20 pm
hi before i start can i use this on my mac comp ? thanks ..
By LouLou Down Under, July 2, 2010 at 4:45 am
By Bubbly, July 2, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Ok I got it to work this time but now I cranked my gps on. And guess what only will show main roads and it won’t even search for things? Um I have no idea what is going on.
By Frenchie, July 3, 2010 at 2:56 am
Why does the mac not get the same options as when working with windows when downloading map updates?? I don’t have enough free GPS space to download the full Europe navigator 2011 update so have of course added a memory card but it seems that if I want to download anything, I can only download maps in parallel rather than either to my mac or to my GPS. Also, don’t understand why the SD card doesn’t just add to the memory space available on the GPS rather than recognised as a separate entity altogether?? So, how will I be able to download the ‘full europe’ map to the memory card if there’s not enough GPS space recognised to do it in one go? Do I have to download the map in parts so I get it all copied to the mac and can eventually transfer the lot to the memory card or also find a non-mac PC to enable this or please tell me there is an easier way??
By Will, July 10, 2010 at 11:54 pm
If youre getting stuck at unlocking the maps (step
Did you follow the steps after it explaining what to do?
Having trouble with unlocking maps? Even with the right Mapsource version?
Mapsource might be causing an issue on your machine.
We have a fix for this :
- Navigate to your garmin installation directory (C:/Garmin/)
- Locate the Mapsource.exe file and rename it to MapsourceOLD.exe
- Download this replacement file, extract the contents and put it in the (C:/garmin) directory
The unlock code should now be accepted.
By Dawn, July 12, 2010 at 5:50 pm
I’ve downloaded the 2011 unlocked map and put it under :\Garmin\ in my SD card because it’s too big for my Garmin Navi 250. I’ve changed the name to gmapsupp.img. My GPS doesn’t seem to notice that it’s even there. I’m trying to download the 2010 version now and replace the gmapprom.img with the newer 2010 gmapprom.img but the link doesn’t work. Help please?
By adam, July 14, 2010 at 2:36 am
i got to the part with mapinstaller and it says i need to unlock the regions and when i click unlock it says its already unlocked so i click next and it tells me i need to unlock the regions before i continue what am i missing
By adam, July 14, 2010 at 2:37 am
btw i have a 255
By pablo, July 15, 2010 at 12:01 am
I have a garmin nuvi 265w and i managed to get the file installed however when i try to put an address to go to it says no data available, what can it be ? thanks in advance
By Beno Echerd, July 15, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Way to complicated for me! All my garmin 750 data is gone.
By Carlos, July 18, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Great Work!!! I updated my nuvi 200w with the 2011.10 3d unlocked using method 2.
Greetings from Puerto Rico.
Brega al 100% Probado y funcionando.
By help101, July 20, 2010 at 11:08 pm
FOR streetpilot c330:
After hours and hours of reading and trying, here are my steps
I have windows 7 64bits
1) buy 2 gig sd memory (not sdhc) and format to fat or fat32
2) download unlocked file from torrent site (demonoid, the pirate bay….)
3) unzip the file if it is zipped (you can use winrar)
4) put the 2 gig sd memory card in your computer or memory card reader and format to fat or fat32(go to my computer, then right click on the icon where your sd card is and left click on format. You “can check “quick format”)
5)Create a folder on your sd card and name it Garmin
6) transfer gmapprom.img to the Garmin folder and Right click the file and rename it gmapsupp…do not rename it gmapsupp.img!!!!!
7) remove the card from your computer and put it in your gps
8)Go to the wrench at the bottom, press maps, then map info…if you do not see it at this point it might be because that you didn’t write the image file the right way or the folder name is not what is supposed to be or the file is not unlocker or unzipped
when you are in your map info on your gps and you remove your sd card, the new maps disappear and they re-appear as soon that you insert your card back in. Then you select the new map that you want and uncheck the old one……..hope that helps a little bit more
By nav, July 22, 2010 at 7:14 pm
does this work in uk ? thanks
:please:
By j khan, July 24, 2010 at 4:09 am
what is the password to download gmapprom.img
By epic, July 26, 2010 at 1:31 pm
i have downloaded every thing you all said from the site. i have done steps 1-8 just like you said. i havea garmin 260w nuvi . i use the unlocker and it dont onlock map what am i doing wrong.
By Petra, July 26, 2010 at 6:26 pm
I feel very disappointed that i couldnt find anywhere the password shared key…can anyone provide us this key ..thnx :pirate: