Thanks so far y'all. I should have mentioned that I just got ISTA+ reinstalled on a new laptop, after what looks like DB corruption on my old one, and I'm having problems getting it to read out vehicle data from the X5.

Not sure yet whether it's a cable problem or comms issues, but I was hoping to parallel track the issue while I'm getting ISTA+ back up to speed...and really hoping that this sounded familiar to someone else and it triggered a handful of suggested diagnostic shortcuts.

In the absence of that however I appreciate the suggestions above, and I'll keep working to get ISTA happy and see what it tells me.