[Noggie]

Right..... this just happened.

2012 F11 Euro, professional Navi.

Unlocked my car and got in, pushed the start button without starting the engine.
Connected my iPhone to the center armrest and notice that the idrive screen is bright orange.
I go WTF!!!!, music starts playing and everything is fine, pull out my phone to snap a picture, disconnect phone to get a better angle as my cable is short.
just about to take the picture and the screen goes black.....dead.....

I press the start button to shut down the car, open/close the door, lock the car, wait 10 sec, unlock the car, start the car, idrive screen still dead.
Radio and phone streaming is working, so it appears just the screen is dead.

As I drive to the shop I'm going to I start cursing this thing and start to imagine my conversation with BMW tomorrow, thankfully my car is under warranty so any fix will not cost me anything, but it means I will be without a car while they fix it, or in a loaner.

Park at the store, do my thing and come out 5 minutes later.
Everything is fine, screen comes up as if nothing has happened, have two other stops on my round and no problem what so ever.

Anyone else seen this, should I consider it a computer glitch, or a sign of something to come?
Thinking about going to BMW tomorrow and see what they say.

[Blkthght]

I had the exact same experience.....bright orange Idrive screen. I'm willing to bet that you left your vehicle parked in the bright sun. My situation during the summer time in the middle of a heat wave that southern california was experiencing. I left the car parked in the a store parking lot for over an hour, came back to the car, started and saw this orange screen. The dash was too hot for me to touch. Took pictures of the screen. Drove home. Parked. Restarted the car about 2 hours later, idrive came back on. Later on I showed the pictures to my BMW service advisor, who then consulted with the technician. They told me that it was a design feature that shuts down the idrive until it can cool off. They said that this was normal operation. Hope that helps.

[SteelersF10]

Originally Posted by Noggie

Right..... this just happened.

2012 F11 Euro, professional Navi.

Unlocked my car and got in, pushed the start button without starting the engine.
Connected my iPhone to the center armrest and notice that the idrive screen is bright orange.
I go WTF!!!!, music starts playing and everything is fine, pull out my phone to snap a picture, disconnect phone to get a better angle as my cable is short.
just about to take the picture and the screen goes black.....dead.....

I press the start button to shut down the car, open/close the door, lock the car, wait 10 sec, unlock the car, start the car, idrive screen still dead.
Radio and phone streaming is working, so it appears just the screen is dead.

As I drive to the shop I'm going to I start cursing this thing and start to imagine my conversation with BMW tomorrow, thankfully my car is under warranty so any fix will not cost me anything, but it means I will be without a car while they fix it, or in a loaner.

Park at the store, do my thing and come out 5 minutes later.
Everything is fine, screen comes up as if nothing has happened, have two other stops on my round and no problem what so ever.

Anyone else seen this, should I consider it a computer glitch, or a sign of something to come?
Thinking about going to BMW tomorrow and see what they say.

This has been discussed before, here and in other forums. Happened to me also. Dealer completed a software upgrade and it did it again. One of our forum brothers says to look at it as a computer. With all of the electronics in our vehicles, the system has to boot up and when it doesn't boot up correctly...hence the orange screen.....When the screen goes black, you can reset it by pushing down on the tuning knob on the radio and hold it down for 30 seconds and it will reboot and function normally....Works for me...

[Noggie]

Originally Posted by Blkthght

I had the exact same experience.....bright orange Idrive screen. I'm willing to bet that you left your vehicle parked in the bright sun. My situation during the summer time in the middle of a heat wave that southern california was experiencing. I left the car parked in the a store parking lot for over an hour, came back to the car, started and saw this orange screen. The dash was too hot for me to touch. Took pictures of the screen. Drove home. Parked. Restarted the car about 2 hours later, idrive came back on. Later on I showed the pictures to my BMW service advisor, who then consulted with the technician. They told me that it was a design feature that shuts down the idrive until it can cool off. They said that this was normal operation. Hope that helps.

Actually it was parked in my garage, temperature of just 16C/60F, first drive of the day, so I doubt it was heat related, I think it was not booting up right.
Thanks for the info though.

[Noggie]

Originally Posted by SteelersF10

This has been discussed before, here and in other forums. Happened to me also. Dealer completed a software upgrade and it did it again. One of our forum brothers says to look at it as a computer. With all of the electronics in our vehicles, the system has to boot up and when it doesn't boot up correctly...hence the orange screen.....When the screen goes black, you can reset it by pushing down on the tuning knob on the radio and hold it down for 30 seconds and it will reboot and function normally....Works for me...

My thoughts too, some computer glitch.
will try the tuning knob reboot if it happens again.

[BigKutta]

Just make sure this issue is well documented with BMW before your warranty expires

[The Beast]

Happened to me too a couple of weeks ago, funnily enough it was when I was parked up and trying to use the radio after it had gone off... Screen went orange and then blank but radio kept on working. It's winter here and cold so it could not be temperature related.

I Googled it and found the idrive reset process, after pressing the radio knob for 30 seconds the screen came back up and no problems since.

[BigKutta]

This is BMW's version of the "blue screen of death"

[Noggie]

Originally Posted by BigKutta

This is BMW's version of the "blue screen of death"

I kind of associated it with the xbox red ring of death

[ezmaass]

Originally Posted by BigKutta

This is BMW's version of the "blue screen of death"

The blue screen of death will soon be something only us "old farts" know about as I haven't seen one in ages now on modern Windows versions... maybe not since XP (circa 2002?).

Alas, how many of you (off topic, I know) remember days PRE-Windows? Just booting up to a DOS prompt. Ahhh, the days of such simplicity.

[Bbb34]

Originally Posted by ezmaass

Alas, how many of you (off topic, I know) remember days PRE-Windows? Just booting up to a DOS prompt. Ahhh, the days of such simplicity.

Right (continuing thread derailment)... but it was impossible to post hundreds and hundreds of selfies online then

Things are much better now.

[Noggie]

Originally Posted by ezmaass

The blue screen of death will soon be something only us "old farts" know about as I haven't seen one in ages now on modern Windows versions... maybe not since XP (circa 2002?).

Alas, how many of you (off topic, I know) remember days PRE-Windows? Just booting up to a DOS prompt. Ahhh, the days of such simplicity.

Dos..... I started with Basic
I had a Commodore 64 back in the late 80's, with a casette tape.
first load a Turbo Tape.
type: Load, then get the "press play on tape" prompt, press spacebar to continue, once the program was loaded 30 minutes later you could choose to type RUN to run the program and play soletaire, or <-L (left arrow L) to skip to the next program.

At school we had some Tiki 100's
Had some friends with Amiga 500's
Oh the joys of 5 1/2" floppy disc's.

Getting a 286 16Mhz PC with Windows 3.11 and the 3,5" floppy disc's was fantastic stuff.

[ezaircon4jc]

My first (and last) programming class was Fortran....... Don't even think of losing a card or getting one out of sequence!! I was the "self-check"!!

[///Msport]

Originally Posted by The Beast

Happened to me too a couple of weeks ago, funnily enough it was when I was parked up and trying to use the radio after it had gone off... Screen went orange and then blank but radio kept on working. It's winter here and cold so it could not be temperature related.

I Googled it and found the idrive reset process, after pressing the radio knob for 30 seconds the screen came back up and no problems since.

Originally Posted by The Beast

Happened to me too a couple of weeks ago, funnily enough it was when I was parked up and trying to use the radio after it had gone off... Screen went orange and then blank but radio kept on working. It's winter here and cold so it could not be temperature related.

I Googled it and found the idrive reset process, after pressing the radio knob for 30 seconds the screen came back up and no problems since.

Thank you for this post. This was almost the last straw for me to sell the car. I was on my way to work thinking what the hell am I going to get next! Power button for 30 seconds for the save.

[Surly73]

This just happened to me Monday. Was still blank for a couple of restarts. Came back normal the next morning and fine ever since. Still under extended warranty until Oct - reporting it to the dealer and have a picture of it lit up orange. If something's flaking out, I'd like it replaced under warranty if at all possible.

[Bklynjoker]

Happened to me months ago n never again. I was able to snap a pic to show service but since it didn't cause problems I left it alone.

[Surly73]

Originally Posted by Surly73

This just happened to me Monday. Was still blank for a couple of restarts. Came back normal the next morning and fine ever since. Still under extended warranty until Oct - reporting it to the dealer and have a picture of it lit up orange. If something's flaking out, I'd like it replaced under warranty if at all possible.

My dealer found a code logging the problem, replacing the head unit under extended warranty.

[Surly73]

So folks, remember to remove non-factory options and coding from your car before going in.

I have a same model year M5 wheel and bag installed, and changed one coding option to enable the paddles. No one cared at the shop, until it was determined as part of my test plan that an integration level update was needed and the car wouldn't take it. Now they need to bill me to undo the head unit repair, and apparently brute force something with BMW software (which they hope will work). Three hours shop rate - hopefully.

I should have known that "transmission noise" and a blank screen should have meant reverting the steering wheel. None of my other coding has ever interfered with dealer warranty work - I just lose it and live with it until I can redo the coding. I suppose even if I just put the factory wheel back on and didn't change the coding back, they'd figure it was a weird bug and figure it out on their dime.

Lesson learned. Any trip to the dealer - M5 steering wheel comes off.

[joejweb]

I had this problem today. After turning the engine off, then starting again and putting the car in reverse, the reverse sensor was made to work. I then turned off the sensor and the display/computer 'powered up' and went back to normal. So in short, another option to the radio button being pressed for 30 seconds, try putting your beamer in reverse .....