Battery, Alternator, or something else? X won't start, help!

[xrob]

Hey all,

Got my 2005 X5 4.4 home yesterday and decided to do some clean-up work on it. First thing I did was replace my dice ipod cable (easy). Then, I played some tunes for about an hour while I removed the factory installed sirius radio antenna (it was a dealer install, the radio was in the area near the battery) as I have a Sirius unit I like better. I then fixed one of my park distance control sensors (it was a little out of place). I was listening to the ipod the whole time.

I shut the car down after this and thought all was well until I had to go out a few hours later. When I tried to start it, all it did was click. No turn over, nada.

Thinking I had maybe messed something up in the battery compartment, I removed everything and double-checked the cabling in that area. Everything seemed fine, but my battery (the original) had a black indicator on it (green is good, yellow is replace, black is not charged). Due to this information I thought that perhaps the battery had just died while I was playing the ipod, although this seemed somewhat unusual as I've never had issues before.

I tried to charge the battery for a good 10 minutes from my wife's Mini and it still wouldn't start up. In fact, it seemed like it was getting harder to start.

So, it seems that the battery is dead. But I haven't gotten any warning lights to this end. So perhaps it's the alternator? Or perhaps I jostled something down where the battery is when I was removing the sirius antenna.

Any advice? My first idea is to take the battery to a local auto parts store and have them test it, and replace it if necessary, but I thought I would check here first.

Thanks for the info!

Rob

[JCL]

Assuming it is the original battery, it is coming up to five years old. Just replace it, that is the life of a battery.