Blank screen confusion- please read
 

Hi all,

I came here because I understand you all are the gurus of BMW nav systems!
I have a 2000 540iT with mkII nav.
I had the screen going blank like this sporatically for a while:
http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/9817/blanknav.jpg

It would sometimes be fine, sometimes do this. Sometimes a simple turn on-off of the key would "fix" it.
Then it went blank like this and never came back. The radio still worked as did the CD changer.
Then the entire ibus system went down- no radio, turn signals, reverse lights, PDC.

I troubleshot the system for what felt like the entire day yesterday- finally I removed the nav drive and the i-bus came back to life. Radio, turns, reverse all work again but the screen was completely black (no illumination or stripe). The Nav drive's pink color plug had some corrosion on it. I cleaned it all off and hoped for the best. Plugged it back in and no luck, but the screen is illuminated and has the stripe again.

Am I right in assuming the drive is just bad? Are there any things I can try to bring it back from the dead before hunting down a new unit?

Thanks so much for reading guys, and in advance for any info you can share!

nobody? :(

It sounds like you have a bad navigation computer. The blue plug is the main plug with the power, I-Bus, signals to the display, etc. If the whole I-Bus goes down, and removing the nav computer solves it, that is a pretty strong indicator. (That and the blank screen is a dead giveaway-- the nav computer is the thing that runs the display.)

A MKII nav supports 16:9?

Yup. I have hooked up a couple MKII computers to a 16:9 screen.

I'd suspect water damage in the nav, especially if the plug had corrosion on it

Thank you Brian, that was my thinking as well. Wasn't sure if I had the dreaded blank screen seeing the stripe though.

Kiwi- yes, I agree