im gonna try life quality and see what they say.

i dont feel there is anythign special about what i did and it did reset itself but i just dont like that type of error. i can deal with the windows and radio garbage but not trans stuff.

 

Fully agree. Its a pretty scary message and simply shouldn't come that frequent in a $60,000 car...

 

My car had SMG problems, and the first time I took it in (after taking an entire day to get it started - wouldn't get out of gear to start it) the dealer said they couldn't duplicate the problem and they just updated the software. Worked ok for a few days, then had the problem again. Eventually got it in to the dealer (again, couldn't get it from 1st to neutral to start it) and they replaced the entire transmission. It has been working fine now, for about two months.
I would recommend taking pictures and very detailed notes about exactly what is happening. The dealer blew me off until I gave them three typed pages of notes of exactly what was going on. I also researched the local lemon laws... The problems aren't being caused by anything you are doing, the transmission is for lack of a better term idiot-proof (trust me... ) but the system is having some issues that BMW is in denial about. Their solution seems to be minimizing the bad publicity and for the most part eliminating the transmission from their lineup. (M SMGs are different.)
Best of luck - these problems can be very frustrating... Still love the car though. Just considering a good old fashioned manual transmission for my next 5...

 

I bet all they needed to change was the hydraulic pumps and not the whole transmission. We had enough of those here on the board with similiar issues of SMG not going into Neutral

 

i cant imagine they would eliminate SMG on non-m cars, its the ONLY reason i bought the an e60.

im gonna do the picture thing next time it happens as see they can fix it

 

sounds like SMG is so unreliable, it scares me, but it is the option that I was gonig to get... any news on the newer 2006 models & the SMG? Did BMW improve it at all?

 

There have not seemed to be alot of problems lately. I would go for it if I were you, I am .