2012 Prius III center console display rebooting

Starting about a month ago, I've been experiencing reboots of the center console display, affecting the backup camera and entertainment system. Here are the conditions:

• Never happens when the car has been off for more than a few hours
• When starting up warm, it happens about 50% of the time. The initial Toyota logo appears, then the display blanks for 20-30 seconds. It may go through several cycles of rebooting, but eventually it always comes up. The longest it's taken to stabilize is 5 minutes or so.
• After finally coming up and stabilizing, it does not reboot again. I.e. once it comes up it stays up for as long as the car is running.
• While it's in the error state, pressing the "Apps" button displays a message "System Not Installed". Other buttons ("Car", Setup) bring up their normal displays momentarily but then blank out. It may just be that these functions come up earlier than the entertainment system and backup camera during the boot process.

I have a 3rd-gen iPhone SE with iOS 15.7.1 paired, in case that's important... I know there were problems back in 2009 with iPhones and BT.

This would be a minor annoyance except it also disables the backup camera, usually when it's most needed (i.e. backing out of parking spaces after driving to the store, etc).

 

Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

 

This is due to the failure of the expansion box that provides GPS and Apps. It's a rather poor design that allows the expansion box to take over the display and disable otherwise working functionality.

See this thread 2012 Prius v MFD failure/how to replace | PriusChat

There are videos available explaining how to remove the console trim, pull out the MFD and disconnect the expansion box. This restores the backup camera and entertainment system (including Bluetooth) but leaves you without apps and GPS. For me that's a fine solution as I never use the apps or extremely out-of-date GPS.

On my III the console trim doesn't look like the videos, and I had to remove significantly more trim, but it wasn't hard to do, it all just pops out. It's a bit intricate, with multiple nesting parts that have to be reassembled in just the right order, but once you line up all the tabs a few good taps with your fist puts everything back into place.

 

Which plug did you disconnect, and on which box?