I've encountered one glitch with my '07 530 xiT: Once, the IDrive computer "froze" on the "Accept" screen (wouldn't accept any commands; Idrive knob turned with no resistance; audio system and nav were non-functional; all non-IDrive car functions operated normally).

I'm in the software biz - what probably happened is that the exact series and timing of IDrive commands I executed when starting the car happened to trigger a race condition hang in the software. Everything was fine after I left the car long enough to allow the IDrive to shut down, so it rebooted next time I started the car.

Question: Is there any way to force an immediate IDrive shutdown or reboot, so I don't have to wait for the normal "timeout" interval if I hit the glitch again?

 

Alt + Crtl + Del

which equates to

DVD Eject + CD Eject + Volume Control Knob (Mute button)

You're Lucky you have nav...


4 Mins for an answer... Not bad if I do say so myself... Calling customer service takes more than 4 mins to go through their automated prompts.

 

Thanks, EBMCS03 - yes, I am very impressed

 

Did you go outside to try it?

 

Why would you ever want to shutdown or reset the iDrive? just curious... is it possible with cars without nav?

 

Nope, only on cars with nav.
Sometimes you might experience a problem with your idrive and you want to reboot to get rid of the problem, jus as in any windows computer. Then you reboot without shutting off the engine.
When idrive is frozen, what shouldn't happen but somehow does, you need this procedure.

 

Oh ok..But wat sort of problems. I've never had problems with my iDrive crashing or antyhing. But maybe poeple with nav have iDrives that crash sometimes.

 

I'm not going to do a metaanalysis of nav vs. non-nav iDrive crashes, but I'd say that it seems to happen to a majority of cars. Including mine (with nav)!