Fault on Prius Excel media player - "loading" message

August 7, 2019

On our 2 year old Prius Excel, a fault has developed when trying to play three different types of media. CDs (both normal CDs and MP3 CDs), USB drives and bluetooth.

The CD starts to play, and does play perfectly - right through to the end if left. But the message "loading..." appears, and never goes away. Also some controls are disabled (ie you can't skip tracks) althugh volume works.

The same "loading" message, which never goes away also shows when you try to play music on a bluetooth connected phone, or a USB drive.

The fault first appeared after a service. The garage has agreed this is a fault under guarantee, but they can't fix it, and are saying a new unit is needed. My guess is this is a software error as it is the same fault for 3 different types of media, and occurs when trying to read the directories of the device.

Has anyone else had this problem? I assume the garage tried disconnecting the device completely which (might) cause a reboot (although they weren't clear when I asked. Is there any other way to reboot the media player etc? I suspect we will have to replace the whole unit (it hasn't yet come in, as we are away for 2 more weeks) and it seems a shame to have to scrap an entire unit. This has all the signs of a software fault which a "reboot" might cure.

August 7, 2019

Check that there isn't a USB drive inserted that has any files other than folders and .MP3 files in the root folder. The system displays a "Loading..." message like that when it tries to install a software update from the USB drive, so it could be seeing a file there that it thinks is an update and is trying to extract it.

August 7, 2019

Thanks, but no, there isn't a USB drive in the USB slot at all. We first noticed this after the last service, so I wonder if some sort of update then failed part way through. But we have been back to the Toyota garage and they spent several hours trying to fix the problem.

August 8, 2019

My thoughts exactly. Ask them to update it to the latest version to see if that fixes it. Or do it yourself. The Excel has free map updates for 3 years from the Toyota UK site.

September 5, 2019

Well - nothing worked, I did try to update the software! So the car now has a new "unit". I'm not sure exactly what was replaced, but everything is working and all our settings were preserved. It took a while as the Toyota Dealer updated the unit to the latest software and maps, and that failed the first time, we were told. So all working, and fixed under guarantee.