not the car - ME !

iDrive is totally dead and requires a new CCC module - this took 4 of the 8 days I've had my car in the shop to figure out. I told them day 1 it was a bad hard drive because I could hear it hammering away trying to boot.

I found out yesterday that the module is at least 30 days back ordered. This is total BS as far as I'm concerned. This is not a fuel pump problem on a brand new engine design that while very poor is at least understandable. The iDrive has been out for years. In my reading of other problems people have had with this on the 6 series over a year ago it's clear that this has been a long standing problem. What I don't get is how BMW can get away with it.

I raised hell with BMW NA yesterday and it remains to be seen if a part can be found sooner.

So brand new $60k car has iDrive completely broken within 48 hours of delivery. No music, no phone, no nav, no clock (they pulled all power from the car trying to "fix" it and there no way to reset it).

Of course, I understand that shit happens and stuff will break. The car still drives fine although if I get a flat and drive beyond the 50 miles will I know it ?? A few days ok, a week maybe but no idea and probably at least a month or more is a disgrace. :mad

That sucks, sorry to hear.

I didn't want idrive, not only because I don't want that much computer in my car, and I think it looked ugly.

That sucks, sorry to hear.

I didn't want idrive, not only because I don't want that much computer in my car, and I think it looked ugly.
I didn't know I-drive had a hard drive. Maybe obvious, but just never thought about it. I would think a car would be a pretty harsh environment for a hard drive, with all the vibrations etc. I heard somewhere that they haven't been too successful in cars using them for music storage for that same reason.

I didn't know I-drive had a hard drive. Maybe obvious, but just never thought about it. I would think a car would be a pretty harsh environment for a hard drive, with all the vibrations etc. I heard somewhere that they haven't been too successful in cars using them for music storage for that same reason.

I doubt if it does... else why the DVD drive for ANV?

not the car - ME !

iDrive is totally dead and requires a new CCC module - this took 4 of the 8 days I've had my car in the shop to figure out. I told them day 1 it was a bad hard drive because I could hear it hammering away trying to boot.

I found out yesterday that the module is at least 30 days back ordered. This is total BS as far as I'm concerned. This is not a fuel pump problem on a brand new engine design that while very poor is at least understandable. The iDrive has been out for years. In my reading of other problems people have had with this on the 6 series over a year ago it's clear that this has been a long standing problem. What I don't get is how BMW can get away with it.

I raised hell with BMW NA yesterday and it remains to be seen if a part can be found sooner.

So brand new $60k car has iDrive completely broken within 48 hours of delivery. No music, no phone, no nav, no clock (they pulled all power from the car trying to "fix" it and there no way to reset it).

Of course, I understand that shit happens and stuff will break. The car still drives fine although if I get a flat and drive beyond the 50 miles will I know it ?? A few days ok, a week maybe but no idea and probably at least a month or more is a disgrace. :mad

Its not only BMW. My experience with Audi was worse!

Its not only BMW. My experience with Audi was worse!


I had an Audi for 11 months and the service was so bad I traded it in and lost about $8K because they were impossible to deal with.

The dealer I bought from went out of business and I cost Audi the sale of an A8L...which my boss had on order.

The car was fine, it was dealing with them after.

Which is why my new attitude is much more relaxed, all dealers usually suck regardless of the "stature"

sorry to hear....


reason 101 not to get iDrive...

CCC stands for Car Control Computer. It's a "box" that houses the DVD drive, CD drive and a few other modules. BMW warranty is reaaaally picky about CCCs because they are extremely expensive and they don't want them to be replaced unless they are absolutely 100% certain that it's the cause of the problem. In order for the tech to replace the CCC, it has to be authorized by the engineers in New Jersey who will first require them to perform several tests on it. The correspondence with the engineers is pretty much all via e-mail, so it's a slow process. That's probably why it took so long for them to let you know what the problem was.

The reason your I-Drive stopped working was most likely because something in the CCC stopped responding. The entire entertainment system is a network, and when one control module in that network stops functioning, it takes the whole network down with it. Contrary to popular belief, it's extremely uncommon for this to happen. Overall, I'd say I-Drive is pretty reliable, it just left a bad first impression and people still hate it for whatever reason. It's too bad that you're having problems with it, and even worse that the part is on backorder. Just be glad you don't have an X5. E53 X5 taillights are on national backorder indefinitely.

I'm not sure if it does have a hard drive but it sure sounds like it does. When you reset it (push in volume knob and hold eject buttons on CD and DVD) it starts hammering at something. I could care less if it's an expensive part because it's an expensive car! What's inexcusable is that a critical component that's essentially been around for years is in such short supply. As for this being rare, this was the second one at the dealership last week and reading a thread about the 6 series last year on bimmerfest quote..

"By my reckoning, based on the 28 people on this Board who have admitted to 6ers, we have 9 so far with iDrive issues. Gentlemen, that's 32%."

I also read there that iDrive is the work of Microsoft. I guess if that's true that goes a long way in explaining the poor quality.

Bottom line is that BMW should be tarred and feathered for having a system like this fail in a 48 hour old car and not have the ability to fix it quickly. They should be pulling replacements from scheduled builds and feel it where it hurts, on the bottom line. A company that prides itself on customer service is failing big time on this and obviously also with all the poor folks with the fuel pump problem.

I had nav in my old Touareg, and that is why I got a Garmin instead for my 335i. My Garmin was easy to hardwire to the fusebox, it is easier to use than iDrive IMO, and way cheaper. Even if it got stolen from my car and I had to replace it, it would still be way under what I would have paid for iDrive nav. After using the audio aux in with my ipod, I feel the same way about the ipod adapter now, too.

The car still drives fine although if I get a flat and drive beyond the 50 miles will I know it ?? A few days ok, a week maybe but no idea and probably at least a month or more is a disgrace. :mad


Sorry to hear this & sure all will work out for you!

You can drive 150 miles on runflat not 50.

I had nav in my old Touareg, and that is why I got a Garmin instead for my 335i. My Garmin was easy to hardwire to the fusebox, it is easier to use than iDrive IMO, and way cheaper. Even if it got stolen from my car and I had to replace it, it would still be way under what I would have paid for iDrive nav. After using the audio aux in with my ipod, I feel the same way about the ipod adapter now, too.

I have the IPOD adapter and it is way better than using the aux jack. You cna control your IPOD with the steering wheel and head unit. The name of the song and the band shows up on the head unit. You have access to all of your playlists. It is simply awesome!! A lot safer too. I have 8,000 songs on my POD and out it on random in the Bimmer. Sometimes an awesome song that I have not heard in years comes up and I have forgot the name of the song or band. I can now easily look a my head unit for this info. The sound is much better than using the aux jack too.

I'm not sure if it does have a hard drive but it sure sounds like it does. When you reset it (push in volume knob and hold eject buttons on CD and DVD) it starts hammering at something. I could care less if it's an expensive part because it's an expensive car! What's inexcusable is that a critical component that's essentially been around for years is in such short supply. As for this being rare, this was the second one at the dealership last week and reading a thread about the 6 series last year on bimmerfest quote..

"By my reckoning, based on the 28 people on this Board who have admitted to 6ers, we have 9 so far with iDrive issues. Gentlemen, that's 32%."

I also read there that iDrive is the work of Microsoft. I guess if that's true that goes a long way in explaining the poor quality.

Bottom line is that BMW should be tarred and feathered for having a system like this fail in a 48 hour old car and not have the ability to fix it quickly. They should be pulling replacements from scheduled builds and feel it where it hurts, on the bottom line. A company that prides itself on customer service is failing big time on this and obviously also with all the poor folks with the fuel pump problem.

The noise that you're probably hearing is either the CD or DVD drive. They can be noisey.

Now do you really expect BMW to take parts from cars on the assembly line? Come on, be realistic. You aren't nearly that important, and you aren't the only person to have problems with your new car. Things happen, technology isn't perfect, but that was clearly a risk you were willing to take by buying an extremely technologically advanced vehicle the first year of production. My advice to you? Suck it up, take the loaner car and the free accessories they'll likely give to you for your trouble and patiently wait for your part to come in. You can complain all you want, and yell at your service writer, and call up BMW and raise hell, but next time you do that, try to recall a time when someone was a jerk to you, yet expected you to help them. Being impatient will get you nowhere. If you're so upset, sell the car and buy a Kia. I can guarantee your CCC won't go bad.

The noise that you're probably hearing is either the CD or DVD drive. They can be noisey.

Now do you really expect BMW to take parts from cars on the assembly line? Come on, be realistic. You aren't nearly that important, and you aren't the only person to have problems with your new car. Things happen, technology isn't perfect, but that was clearly a risk you were willing to take by buying an extremely technologically advanced vehicle the first year of production. My advice to you? Suck it up, take the loaner car and the free accessories they'll likely give to you for your trouble and patiently wait for your part to come in. You can complain all you want, and yell at your service writer, and call up BMW and raise hell, but next time you do that, try to recall a time when someone was a jerk to you, yet expected you to help them. Being impatient will get you nowhere. If you're so upset, sell the car and buy a Kia. I can guarantee your CCC won't go bad.

Your point's well taken, I agree that losing one's temper a the dealership is counter productive(lesson hard learned).

However, here's the rub- I'm a bit soured by my experience with my HPFP- I brought the car in, got a bit of a run around (dealer told me to call BMWNA, BMWNA told me to talk to dealer etc.), then basically got the gist of what was happening...

3 weeks ago. Haven't heard from the dealer at all. Not even a phone call to say, "sorry Mr. Anisman, but still no answer from BMW as the when your FP wil arrive". No offers to recitfy the situation, not a word.

*If* we're not that important, then BMW will not be able to compete as a car company- the performance market that they dominated for so long is being seriously challlenged by many other companies, and the simple truth is that if I had bought an IS350 (BMW won by a hair), then I'd be driving my car. I'll be first to admit that there's a magic that happens in a BMW as opposed to infiniti, Lexus, Mercedes, and Audi, but BMW not taking care of business on this issue has left many people, including myself, with a very sour taste in their mouths. I feel that the least BMW shoudl do is put us in 335 loaners. That, although somewhat expensive and unrealistic, would be fair. Fine, the 328 loaner is a great car. but I paid for a 335i, Sirius radio, etc etc etc.

It's frustrating and dissappointing. All we can do is sit on our hands and hope for the best...

-Todd A.

sorry to hear that. Was your car a dealer demo?

I also read there that iDrive is the work of Microsoft. I guess if that's true that goes a long way in explaining the poor quality.

Yes, the iDrive runs on top of Windows CE. It's a real computer, with an hard drive and everything. If microsoft couldn't ever do a proper system for home PC's, nor a proper and stable full software-hardware product like the XBox, how could they ever do an embedded PC capable of running stable in a car?

I'm sorry for your iDrive failure. If I were you, I'd be kicking those guys to get a new module asap (as you said, expensive car, you just want it working), and I would be complaining hard about the vendor of the module. Something like "hey BMW, if I were you I would kick the vendor of this iDrive module... after these many years, it still sucks and blows... It crashes so much that it looks like being done by Microsoft... hey, isn't it really done by them? :D"

If everyone complains about it, maybe they decide to move to a proper stable system from some other vendor.

update:

BMW NA sent out a new CD and after another two days of repeat loading of software they finally got the unit to boot. I picked up the car yesterday and everything was fine until the first crash less than 20 yards outside the dealership's gate. It rebooted OK and I got my iPod and bluetooth phone working last night. This morning during a 10 minute drive to work it crashed again three times. Changing radio stations, pulling up a phone number to call etc.

The part is back ordered for at least a month so I'll deal with it as is. As long as it keeps coming back it's better then nothing at all.

In spite of it all, I think the interface is pretty good. The reliability sucks of course and that seems pretty typical of Microsoft work. BMW should have contracted Apple to do it.