Just to come back here, the only codes my car showed when I ran the OBD was P0700 and P17ea.

Transmission related, no engine related codes.

At a loss here.

 

You sure about P17EA? I can't find that one with Google or in the Bentley manual. I think P0700 is pretty generic and doesn't really tell much other than some transmission complaint.

 

Ok so I was able to get the Service Engine Light to disappear. Its only been an hour or so, so I will have to report back in later and see what happens in the future. However, I remembered that maybe a month back, the Microfilter light came on in iDrive (said time to replace.) Well I looked only and saw some guys were just cleaning theirs out and it was lasting for more time, so I cleaned mine and reinstalled under the hood. The Microfilter light didn't immediately go away but after a couple days it became green again.

Furthermore, I saw some videos of guys resetting e90's in the dash by entering the menu and toggling through Oil/front/back brakes/emissions (this menu is in the cluster) and they said you should be resetting these items when you service them (oil, microfilter).

So low and behold I reset the oil and microfilter through this method (similar to this video I'll attach below) and it Service Engine light disappeared. I'm thinking/hoping that the SES light had come on because I had no reset the Microfilter or Oil (which I also added some obv in this thread).

Crossing my fingers for now.

** This is on E90 but for E60 2007 530i it was almost identical except we need to hold the push pin in to reset instead of the BC button like on E90

 

100% sure about P17EA, I just decided to clear it through my ELM327. I cleared the P0700 as well but haven't given much time to resurface. As of now the codes have been cleared and have not popped back up yet.

I couldn't find anything on P17EA either other than some possible gear 5-6 ratio problem, but there was literally 1 website (was in German) had to have Google translate. There was virtually no info on this code on the web.

 

The car has no way to know you changed the micro air filter, so you needed to change that on the dashboard.

I've got another question...There is the "Service Engine Soon" indicator in the upper part of the dashboard and then there is the information section down below. I don't see how the micro air filter can light up the check engine indication at the top. It could keep something in the lower display.

 

The car knew, because once I removed and manually cleaned them, the Microfilter notification went from red to green again, although I never went into the cluster to actually reset it.

The SES light on the upper cluster (yellow writing) literally went away once I reset the microfilter and oil indicator on the cluster. Could be a weird series of events but that's what did it.