Humminbird 597ci randomly resets itself

[iland99]

I'm having a VERY frustrating problem with my 597ci HD.  Twice now it has randomly reset itself back to factory default settings, as well as wiped all my GPS data clean.  Obviously this really sucks.  The first time it happened I thought maybe it was because I didn’t power the unit down before disconnecting the battery in my kayak, but I’ve been very diligent about powering down before disconnecting battery ever since that happened.  A couple weeks ago it did it again, this time in my ice fishing soft pack, and I know for sure it had nothing to do with disconnecting the battery.  This last time it also refused to save any of my settings for a while, so I had to go in and redo everything every time I cycled the power.  Now it seems to be saving things normally, so I’m not sure what was going on there.  I still can’t figure that one out, and I have no idea what I did to get it to save settings again.  Has any of this ever happened to anyone else?

By the way, I did contact Humminbird customer service about these issues, and they weren’t much help.  I found out that if I wanted to send it in for service, there would be a $68.50 diagnostics fee, and if there was a problem found that required service or replacement there would a flat rate service fee of $255.45!!  That’s a total of $324 to service or possibly replace a unit that’s less than 3 years old.  I can buy a new Helix 5 or Lowrance Elite 5 for less than that.