Sat Nav probs, can it be reset?

[Byff]

I've had my MCS for a few months now, bought it second hand, so I'm slowly getting round to doing all the little jobs to make it perfect.

I opted for the Sat Nav equipped car as I don't like the idea of my wife being able to see the speedo too easily and besides, the Sat Nav might come in handy one day.

Unfortunately, the Sat Nav stopped working and I had no joy getting it fixed from the previous owner and the dealer wants £800 for a new DVD unit. So I thought I'd whip it out and try cleaning the lens, but while it's out, can you reset the computer part of it?

I have a feeling that the unit has been flashed to the latest software as I found a re-writable CD in the drive. Just incase it's this upgrade that's caused the problem, would a hard reset switch it back to the original software settings?

The symptoms of the Sat Nav not working are:

If you leave the screen on the car stats screen, it's fine
When we first got the car, it had the dodgy disk in and would work for a while, before completely losing what road you were on and a loading maps message would be displayed. Now that I've ejected the disk to see what version maps it was, it won't let me put a disk back in.
If you select Sat Nav from the computer screen, the screen keeps going blank as if it's lost it's signal.

Thanks for any help you can offer and hopefully any future posts will be of a less technical nature.

[Byff]

Well, I've had a bit of a fiddle with it today and had no luck what-so-ever.

To get to the unit, you have to take the front seat out and then remove a black box that the unit sits in. Stripped the lid off the sat-nav unit and gave the lens a good clean, tested it while everything was stripped out and it hasn't made a blind bit of diference.

The disc goes in, the head attempts to read the disc a couple of times then the disc gets spat out. Message on the display "No CD inserted"

I've just put everything back and now the airbag light is permanantly on. Great eh!!!!

Does anyone know if the light just stays on after a lead has been disconnected and it needs to be reset? The plugs are back in correctly and no force was needed to remove them, so I doubt the wires are damaged.

*Edit*

Just read the Airbag warning light thread and my question has been answered. The computer has detected a fault (i.e. Me messing around) and the light will be on until the dealer can reset it. I'll wait until I've actually fixed the sat-nav unit before I pester the dealer.

[RVW]

I had this happen on my 2003 CD sat nav comp just took it to dealer and they did a reset
But I now have a DVD comp installed bought it from you now where It is just plug and play. You could keep an eyeopen for one. They seem to go for 2 to400 so that could save you some money compared to the stealer

eBay.co.uk: BMW MK4 DVD SAT NAV GPS V28 E38 E39 E46 E53 MINI Rover (item 260078633060 end time 28-Jan-07 19:59:58 GMT)

[DaFlake]

It could simply be a bad map disk. Do you have the original? Some units are picky with copied disks for some reason.

[Byff]

I have the original maps disc but when I bought the Mini, it had the copied disc in and was reading it, but only for a short while.

I've found someone prepared to see if he can fix the problem, but I'm still keeping an eye open for a cheap mk4 unit on ebay.

[DaFlake]

mk4 is a nicer unit.