so as of right now the rear doors and tailgate only havent unlocked in a few days. but when it was a speradic issue you would unlock all doors with one press and it would be pretty much all at the same time as far as i can tell, then whatever issue is happening when i went to lock with 1 press it must not have locked the rear doors (lock plunger in the up position) and my wife not knowing went to grab something from the back seat and set the alarm off. so the vehicle thinks the doors were locked but they were unlocked. which makes me think to check to get in the X5, press the interior lock button so it thinks all doors are locked then try to unlock the rear doors with the interior handles. assuming in its brain when i press unlock that it has unlocked the doors hence the interior handles not triggering the unlock mechanism.

Do some direct testing. You exactly described my suspicion of dying DLA. I had to refurbish about 4-5 of them between our two e53.

$12 vs. $230@

unlocked it after work with the key fob button and only front doors unlocked. sat in it and locked/unlocked with the central button behind the shifter and after 3 attempts the rear doors unlocked and lock 5 times in a row. drove to the grocery store and it wouldnt lock the rear doors after multiple attempts. i did manually lock them when i got home just to be safe overnight. then this morning went to unlock with the key and all doors unlocked. got to work and hit the lock button on the key and they all locked.

rear doors and tailgate wont unlock
 

Symptom of wearing door lock actuator.

How many miles when you had the auto lock from speed disabled?

Wife's had that on and 3/4 of her DLA failed about 160,000 mi.

Mine did not hand it on and only one failed in 205,000 mi.

They fail when the brushes on the cheap motors fail. They will go though an intermittent phase where they work when they want to.

In our case they would usually take a couple tries to unlock but would unlock by the third try. That lasted a few months and then would either lock or unlock but not the other.

The risk of continuing with a misbehaving DLA is if the secondary lock fails locked you can't open the door at all.

I can attest to this as I just went through it last week. My DLA had been inconsistent for a couple of months. I bought a new unit and was planning on installing when the weather gets cooler here in TX later in the fall. Instead, the actuator failed altogether leaving the door unable to be unlocked from either inside or outside latch. Made the job exponentially harder!

Best regards,
Chris
Lockhart, Texas

When this happens you can usually get the secondary lock to unlock with enough tries, by using the keyfob to lock/unlock (just one press unlock then try inside door handle) if it doesn't work no point in Seville unlock attempt, relock the doors and try again. You can try the emergency egress also where you lock with the keyfob twice white inside the car then while holding the central lock button down to disable the secondary lock pull the inside handle to unlock. If the button pops up, use fob to unlock before open the door to disable the alarm.

If the secondary motor odd completely failed you have a rough day ahead of you. You can find the pinout and use a couple 9v batteries in series to apply extra voltage to the secondary motor both directions to try to get it off the dead spot and unlock one more time.

would the DLA wearing out effect both rear doors and tailgate at the same time or they on the same circuit? auto lock was disabled 2,000ish miles ago when the truck was at 162K. ive only owned it for about 2,500 miles. is the DLA the same part that would be in my 01? its got 250k on it but never had a lock issue and never had auto locks (atleast not in 120k miles of my ownership)

this is my last working day this week so tomorrow and friday i will be diving deeper into it. just want to avoid firing the parts cannon at it if its something simple

When wife's went bad they failed in very quick succession. Very close to the miles you are. You may have just not noticed one or two doors you weren't using weren't reliably unlocking and when you did a couple already have failed.

The test is pretty simple; if the bolt doesn't pop up first press the motor is shot. Same for locking; the assembly is not going to temporarily stick or jam. The first time it doesn't lock or unlock on the first press the brushes are worn out.

If you are reasonably handy with you hands you can refurbish for $12@.

I have a detailed step by step process outlines search for title: AWR-fix and look for DLA.

If there was a way to verify the age you might can find used on eBay.

eBay genuine used ≈50$

had 4 days off of work and the door locks didnt fail once so i was not able to diagnose, first day of work and the rear locks fail because of course they would lol