VR not activating on 6th Gen ULF.

[Kev]

Evening all,
After managing to blow the ULF on my 2004 E53 last year (don’t ask… I managed to get pins 17 and 19 confused and supplied 12v to god knows where), I’ve since picked up a nice 6th Gen unit on Ebay.
A million thanks again to John (CCFJ1) that hosted me over Christmas at his while we checked his custom loom with the new ULF and repaired (by Baris) BM54 unit.
BTW the repair by Baris was spot-on too and not only repaired but also improved the sound quality greatly.
Anyway, it all connected perfectly on the workbench at Johns, but for whatever reason the VR setting wouldn’t stick when we tried to code the ULF using Carsoft. To be honest I recalled the same when I coded the original ULF, but it dida actually work, so perhaps the software just wasn’t reading the ULF and displaying it correctly?
After hooking everything up on the car last weekend, it was perfect, much better compatibility with the iphone, but I found that VR still wasn’t working (the control on the wheel just activated last-number redial).
Ok, out with the Resler USB iBus interface, and tapped into the CD changer plug. Luckily the colours matched exactly as decribed on reslers site for an X5, ie. Red-red (+12v) Brown-brown (GND), stripey-white-white (iBuS). With a tester I found 11-12v on red, and 8-9v on white. So should be ok?
The interface connected ok, showed up on Windows 7 (32bit) as COM10 so changed it to COM2 as Carsoft only recognized COM1-4.
Trouble is, no matter what ‘perform diagnostics’ option I select I get a ‘cable bad communication error’, same when trying ‘special functions > coding’
Now I start to question my own memory on whether it was Carsoft or not that I used before as I don’t see the ULF option in the coding section.
Any suggestions on how to get the VR enabled without a trip to the main dealer (I don’t have any indie close by).
Thanks for any advice.
Cheers, Kev.