Any Ideas? iPod Classic freezes with new BMW 5-Series

Yes, this resets it, done that, way too many times. But I do not accept the final paragraph.

1 If the iPod is charged to start with, unstable power should not make it hang up.

2 The issue occurs while the engine is running and when the engine is turned off (ie pod stays on or locks after shutting car off), so this does not suggest that this is the cause anyway.

I now have the official BMW lead for the iPod - I am hoping above hope that screening or something else on the lead will mean that its fixed, but if not, then Apple and BMW are jointly liable for this failing until one of them proves the other to be at fault.

The official lead is much thicker than a std lead and I hope this is due to double screening. Luckily I managed to blag one for free - they are £43 normally, although if it fixes it, I would be relatively content to pay that.

I'll let you know.

The other thing to note is that I wanted to know how to stop the crash from happening, not how to recover from the crash as I already knew that, thanks.

With BMW, the engine stops, but the power to the iPod and radio stay on for about 10 minutes, which allows the voltage to stabilise. Everything works just fine at this point. But when the car finally powers down (at which point the car volts will be a stable and noise free 12.6V, it fails to send, or the iPod fails to receive the shut down command. The pod stays on and flattens itself.

At other times it locks up while the car is running.

I have now tried the new BMW lead and that has not improved things - pod flat as a pancake this morning.

Now it has not frozen again yet, but as one problem is still present, one presumes the other will appear again too.

I am not at all happy with having to connect and reconnect the pod as suggested, even if this fixed it, which experience so far suggests it won't anyway. My old car with my £100 DICE kit worked just fine so I don't feel that moving "up" to a BMW I should have to tolerate this. It should just work.

Thank you for your continued interest in this topic.

The iPod is the latest firmware and the car is too - updated them both.

Yes it is trashy service. Clearly they can't be compatible with everything, but Apple are a BMW strategic partner. There are only a few Apple products relatively speaking and mine is relatively new, but not brand spanking new so in the ideal zone where compatibility should not be an issue.

I had a few more technical ideas that I exhausted last night - using a ferrite core around the cable to reduce high frequency mush. But last night I had the follow fault appear right in front of my eyes - one I have had several times but never watched happen in action and see the chain of events (or lack of events):-

Radio power on, ignition off, engine been off for an hour - so everything electrically as calm as you can be. iPod was not showing as present immediately, which sometimes it is, so I guess it was clear already something was not quite right. But it connected and began playing from where it left off. All well and good. Half way through the track, grey Apple logo lock-up. I didn't touch a thing. So this is way more than not sending the correct shut off signal. There is a fundamental issue between the two devices (car and player).

My phone and another USB power converter were also removed from the car - there was nothing in the car that was not original equipment, so no chance of blaming stray noise.

My last hope to prove its the car is to connect an old nano and see if that does it. But truth is that these are such different devices, it would have to be a gross design error to also be faulty on that, so I am guessing I won't prove it is the car, but won't prove it is noth either using this method. But I will have taken every possible option to help myself out in the absence of help from BMW (The dealer basically updated the software and said it was not the car - we could not unlock your iPod they said - what that means is they could not be bothered to unlock it and investigate properly - they updated the software, found no fault codes and concluded (QED) the car is fine - this is a very German thing - there is no contemplation that they might be wrong - they assume that their fault detection is perfect as well as their original design.

I will be taking this issue back to BMW HQ once I have exhausted all the possible options, which I am bear to doing,

I hope I don't have to end up buying a DICE or Dension interface to get around this - that would be a joke on a car of this value.

Now we are getting down and dirty - which is good.

Realocs - Zero

Retracts - 5

Power on - 114 (This is WRONG!!)

Start/Stops - 11179 (Really??)

Current temp - 22c

Min Temp - 53c (Logical issue with previous value here!)

Max Temp - 253c

Clearly that temp bothers me - safe junction temp for any IC is max about 150. But do I beleive it, given two other clear errors in the way the data has been presented.

My slight brewing concern now is this:-

In my old car the glovebox was air-conditioned - pod nice and cold all the time so I left it in its padded case.

In my new BMW, its in the centre console, small space, not chilled, shared with phone, also giving off heat, and until I had this problem, I had the pod in its padded case - it got quite warm, so I have it out of the case now. But is it too late? Design failing by BMW here - centre box is intended for a phone and a media device - they should provide active air exchange, if not full cooling.

On the thread you pointed to, it pointed to a hard drive format "fix to fix all fixes", so I have jumped in with both feet and am doing that - full sector by sector format, not a quick format. That should in my understanding lock out any bad sectors.

We will see if that helps .......

No problem with the hard drive then Jose.

I have got no further with mine - I looked at replacing the HDD with flash, but it looks very involved. I did a total drive format, and that made no difference at all.

I still have the same problems - BMW cannot fix it, or even fault it, but it their germanic way, just say it is not a fault with the car because they cannot find the fault - no other good reason.

I was advised (by the dealer!) to keep plugging away at BMW because 1) its a relatively new model 2) the more reports they get, the more likely they beleive its a car issue and begin to feel embarased enough to fix it.

The dealer has also advised I keep a log of when, why and how it fails - basically I am asked to become BMW's Beta tester, for free of course.

So Jose, make sure you batter down the door of your BMW dealer, and the country customer reps etc.

I should add that I suggested to BMW that I would buy a new iPod if they would refund me if it was a problem with the new one too - they declined indicating that they are not confident the fault is with my iPod.