This is my attempt to educate the general public with news of changes affecting owners and prospective owners of John Deere Precision Ag products and services. I do NOT represent corporate John Deere. I do NOT represent any John Deere dealers. Content on this website should be considered as-is without warranty or guarantee. Please contact your local John Deere dealership with any questions, comments or concerns. Note: This post was NOT written by any form of AI (artificial intelligence).
2026 Calendar Year Causes Loss of Activations to John Deere 1800 and 2600 Displays and Apex™ Desktop Software
The start of the 2026 new year brought a couple of surprises to owners of John Deere GS2 1800 and GS2 2600 Displays; And Apex™ Desktop software. Owners of these displays and software are being greeted with a loss of activations and messages such as "Out of date activation" and "Failed to activated GreenStar Apex"
While I'm holding out hope that John Deere will issue software update to fix these issues, the workaround fix is to set your display or computer's date and time back to a time in 2025.
On 1800 and 2600 displays you'll need to ensure "GPS Time Sync" is unchecked and then manually set the date back to 2025. Then turn the key off on your machine, allowing the display to power down correctly. Unplug the StarFire™ GPS receiver, and plug it back in. The display may need to be unplugged as well. This procedure seems to vary for some users. Your John Deere dealer can also re-issue activation codes for your 1800 or 2600 display as well.
Additional note: this has nothing to do with 2024 being the last crop season available in Menu - GreenStar - Resources.
For Apex™ Desktop software you'll need close out the Apex error message and right click on the date/time in the lower right corner of your screen to turn off set time automatically and manually change the date/time back to 2025. Note: this procedure may vary depending upon which version of Windows your computer runs and may also require a full computer reboot after changing the setting. There may also be unintended consequences of manually changing your computers date and time. I'd recommend a time after you last finished field work in 2025.
NOTE: These are workarounds and can carry risk and unintended consequences. This information is provided as-is without warranty - please refer any questions for equipment that was not purchased from me to your local John Deere dealer