XSeries-forum

Evening All,  came upon a diagnostic problem today that has me competely baffled. Tried to connect Autocom via diagnostic port but unable to communicate. Light on on diagnostic cable and obd fuse ok. Failing that tried another laptop with DIS. Same problem, cant communicate. Then tried a friends Delphi with same result. Then tried all 3 units on my buddys 2008 E70 and all working as normal. Anyone come across this before or have any suggestions. Thanks for any suggestions.

A previous owner could have disabled it?  There was a time when Owners worried about having their cars stolen by a cloning activity chose to disable the port.

The mystery deepens. Its a one owner car and he said he never heard of it being disabled. On the front seat is an invoice and a key printout from BMW for a service done only 3 wks ago. The service indicator has not been reset nor has a number of other faults on the report. I called them up and a guy i know there told me that they couldnt connect either hence no faults cleared. Yet 2 m9nths ago he had brake disks replaced and bmw told him the leave the car overnight so they could plug it in and update all the modules. Supposed to be done but who knows.

Unless one of those updates denies access except to BMW Dealers......which goes against the whole ethos of the OBD2 standard.  Either that or the Dealer messed it up!

Why did i have those very same thoughts but why on a 10 year old car. Need to back and double check every fuse tomorrow. Strange thing is obd is supposed to be fuse 130 and 131 but 131 is missing. Then again this could be normal .

Security updates are added to all the time - as long as the car goes into a main Dealer.  I had my winter tyres fitted last week and they told me that they were putting a couple of updates in whilst the car was plugged into Munich’s servers.  They didn’t know what they were though, so just assumed some kind of patching which could have been anything really.  My X6 is now over 7 years old.

If thats the case i wonder why bmw main dealer couldnt log in either. Just spoke with another service guy i know  in bmw and he told me last month they had an 2007 X5 in for a new key and they couldnt log in to diagnostics. Customer wasnt at all impressed.

It's looking more and more likely that the obd port has been disabled during the recent software updates. What now ?  Does this mean we can't diagnose and repair our own cars anymore ? 

update. as thought the obd port was disabled during a recent software update. Now embroiled in a battle to get bmw to unblock it. We sell quite a few of the older model beemers and this now means we can no longer use our diagnostic equipment to service and repair customers cars. i have been told that there is a european law passed prohibiting bmw from doing exactly this. Anyway the current X5 in question belongs to a solicitor who said he will take the matter further if they dont enable the diagnostic port again.

That's naughty, surely the BMW techs you spoke too would have been aware if this was common practice.
Never heard anyone on here experiencing the same problem.
Have BMW admitted this is the case.
I thought the law said you were able to have your service work done at a VAT registered garage, even to uphold your warranty.
Car outside of warranty has no links to BMW what so ever.

I must admit that I thought the idea behind the OBD2 standard was it was ‘open’, however given the number of thefts where the OBD2 port was used because it was still powered on BMWs - something the standard does not require - it is possible that BMW have turned it off as a security measure.

It depends upon what they have done and how it has been implemented, and BMW are not the only manufacturer to turn the connector off.  What would be wrong though would be if it required proprietary (and only supplied by BMW) hardware or software code to turn it on again to allow servicing by anyone other than a main Dealer.

It could be that just a wire link is needed?  Not played so that is a 100% speculative guess.

They were selling fake OBD ports on Amazon, the idea was the kit came with an OBD extension lead.
You were to relocate the original OBD2 port somewhere hidden behind the dash. And screw the fake one into the original position, so stopping fooling  thieves trying to gain Info from the cars ECU to replicate a key.
I know BMW did a software patch but others havnt had access problems

Just to update on this problem. The diagnostic port was NOT disabled by recent software as was suggested to me. Eventually brought the car to bmw to see could they access the system. They failed to connect as i had done with 3 previous machines. The baffling part was that when each machine was connected to the diagnostic port the light came on . Out of curiosity and being a long time on the road I decided to dismantle the diagnostic port. While examining the little holes where the pins go I noticed 1 of them had no metallic core. To cut a long story short at some stage the inner core had broken off and probably removed still attached to the pin in the obd connector. Anyway I removed the broken bit and soldered in a new female connector and hey presto ! Back in business again. Judging by the amount of cheap inferior parts used in the earlier E70s Im inclined to believe that bmw sourced these obd ports in the remote mountains of China .