I had my car "reprogrammed" with the latest version, 26 I think, not long after I bought it due to some engine roughness on start. Afterwards all my personal settings like seat and mirror positions, radio stations, etc were gone and I had to redo them all. Does reprogramming the engine wipe out these settings? Reason I'm asking is that I brought my car back last week for the same problem, had two O2 sensors replaced and they said they were going to reprogram it again and it would take over the weekend to do it (this was late Friday PM). After spending the weekend in a nice X5 loaner, when I picked up my car there was no mention of the reprogramming on the maintenance ticket nor did I have to redo any of my settings. So - you think it was reprogrammed?

 

Good question. In the early days, reprogramming erased the personal settings for sure. Later on, I think service technicians were instructed to manually "back them up" using a pencil and paper method then re-enter them after the update was finished. Now, I'm pretty sure that the newer versions of the software have some means of retaining the personal data during the upgrade process. If not, then my tech is pretty good at "backing them up" manually...

So to answer your question, it's likely that you got an update and the tech didn't bother to save the settings...