New Gremlin
 

don't post much but i'm here quite a bit learning from all of the great posts. love my '07 x5 and i'm not bothered by the occasional software bugs but i have a new one that surfaced for the first time yesterday that is aggravating. every time i enter the vehicle and start it, the radio is muted. i'm not muting it before i exit the vehicle and this never occurred prior to yesterday. has anyone ever experienced this and, if so, was there a remedy? thanks in advance.

I think it has to do with BMW looking to silence republicans..... lol---jk

No, that one is weird, I did have an issue with my radio cutting out like the speed volume was turning down the volume over and over. It was over a long weekend drive and since has not returned.

That does not seem like an audio content issue though. You could delete the memory for programmabel keys in iDrive and just reset your settings. Not sure if this effects audio but worth a shot. GL

thx, SC. tried your recommendation but no love. 190 views and no one else has experienced this?

UPDATE: the radio automatically muting continued for several days then suddenly self-corrected. this lasted for 2 days then the auto-muting returned. i still cannot find the root cause. however, i did have an interesting several days with the electrical system. sorry in advance for the long post.

a few days ago my battery began to demonstrate signs of trouble (slightly dimmed lights and sluggish start-up). yesterday i lost the 6 memory buttons and had to reprogram, but all other memory features remained. today the battery completely died and i had to jump the battery.

once the X was back up and running, i noticed that my hardwired V1 had stopped working and i assumed i had blown a fuse when i jumped the battery. i replaced the inline fuse for the V1 but that didn't bring it back to life even though it would work in my wife's car. when i grabbed the cla to use as a back-up, i found the culprit. since i don't smoke, i use the ash tray as a coin holder and, years ago, i removed the cigarette lighter to prevent my kids from burning themselves. when i opened the sliding tray to plug in the cla, i found a dime sitting in the socket. when i checked the fuse panel, the corresponding fuse was blown. removed the dime; replaced the fuse. battery seems to be back to normal and the V1 is operating.

however, the radio still mutes on start-up. :dunno:

I have the SAME problem...just recently my radio is always muted when I get back in the car and for the life of me can NOT find a cause or solution.

don't have that issue but today one of the gremlin issues returned.

my audio kept scrolling thru inputs but with a new twist today. the volume would increase on its own breifly.

as for your cig lighter............ the kids will only do that once........... bahahaha.

sorry, old school. both my parent's cars and i originated in the early '60s. :)

Radio muted and key FOB battery information.
 

I found the root cause to the radio being muted...turned out to be a weak battery. BMW found that my computer logged 82 short trips, meaning not long enough to charge up the battery, and being it was the original battery on an '07 X5, I opted to get a new battery. Now everything is working again and my radio is not muted each time I get in the car.

Weird that it did this...not sure if this is as designed to conserve the battery power or ???

One possible cause was that I leave the key in the car when I park it (since it's always in my garage). I discovered this was causing the car to never go into sleep mode because the key would continuously wake up the car, thus it was draining down the battery and then the short trips weren't enough to get it fully charged. Now I bring the key in the house when I'm home.

I also learned that the E70 keys use a standard watch battery and it takes 30 seconds the change it...I was reading about folks that were cutting open their keys to change the RECHARGEABLE battery and some were ruining their keys. I was all set to cut open my key when I learned that you can easily change the battery with a 2032 watch battery. If you do this, remember you have 60 seconds to change the battery our your key will lose the program and (according to BMW), you'll have to bring it back in to get it reprogrammed.

Hope this helps.

I had a similar problem and it was due to a short in the telephone antenna. The wiring in the tailgate had broken and was giving only an intermittent connection. Making the audio think the phone was connected and therefore muting the radio.

With the necessity of battery registration to the computer, it's definitely designed to do things such as that.