malcburt

Hi, My 59 reg 1.4 tsi has started making a knocking/clonking noise when I reverse with a bit of lock on, which seems to emanate from somewhere down below. Do any of you recognise this, and should I be worried? Cheers

Well you were certainly right. Took the car into SG Smith (Croydon) this morning after emailing a certain John Roberts in the service deparment (who Mobov namechecked on this subject recently). Wasn't optimistic to start with since he'd said he didn't recognise the fault I was describing. However the plugged it into the diagnostic and sure enough found the new firmware. An hour later it was a Bolero transformed, full 16GB SD card loads and navigates between folders in 2 seconds max. Also one surprise for me was that I'd had a problem with ID3 tags not always being displayed correctly, so sometimes the album name would be blank, sometimes the track name would be replaced with the filename. I saw other people had complained about that and it was suggested the problem was with the tags on their files. However all mine are now perfect so clearly was a fault with the old firmware. There's a lesson here for anybody, if your local service department tries to fob you off by denying there's any update, as was the case with the large Surrey VAG franchise (who I won't name and shame, though it's very tempting) who serviced my car the other day, don't give up. It seems some dealers are much better than others - even though SG Smith have only been a Skoda agent for under a year so might be forgiven for being on the learning curve. PS: I don't work for them :-)

So what you're saying is that you're 100% certain that there is one available? Maybe there isn't for a post FL Octavia I don't know the kit they plug in but rather assumed it automatically detected upgrades, much like windows live update on your PC so no digging would be required???

Had my Octy (bought Jan 10) in for a service yesterday and asked for a Bolero firmware upgrade having read this thread - mine has exhibited all the slow loading symptoms described here - and was told that none was available for my unit. They claim that when they plug it in for a diagnostic check it would have automatically shown up if an upgrade was available. All very disappointing and confusing. I'm wondering whether they having me on (they said an upgrade would have been done under warranty if there had been one) or are there really different specs of Bolero units, some of which don't have new firmware? Anybody think it worth my while trying a different dealer.

Hi, Having not missed a beat over the last 12 months, my Octy 1.4 TSI has suddenly developed an alarming reluctance to start from cold in the last couple of days. Have to turn the engine over for several seconds, then it fails to catch, and even if it does it sounds as if its on 2-3 cylinders and stalls if I don't rev it. Once it's finally cleared its throat it seems to be OK, apart from a stink of unburnt fuel, it runs fine after that, not even a hiccup, and hot starting is fine. Until the day before yesterday it had always fired up instantly, but now it's touch and go if it will start at all. Anybody heard of this? I had a search and couldnt find any mention of other owners having a problem. It's just about due its first service so hopefully can be easily fixed then (and presumably should be fixed under warranty anyway). Thanks

Ah, excellent. I'd been on the lookout for mention of a firmware update and missed that. For the meantime I'm back to the tried and trusted very slow way. Pity the mix function still won't work but that's not a great loss for me.

No, I wondered that but if anything it's less unusual than the tracks immediately preceding it on the album

Hi there, My first posting so go easy on me! I’ve read with a lot of interest the various posts about how to improve the performance of the Bolero SD card media player. After 6 months of happy ownership of my new Octavia I finally got fed up with the performance of the media player. I have a Bytestor 16GB Class 4 SDHC card, loaded about ¾ full with files in nested directories, i.e. “Artist†directories in the root with “Album†subdirectories beneath. It worked fine, but as everyone else has said, it’s agonizingly slow starting up and navigating between directories. So yesterday I decided I’d try and follow some of the advice about how to format the card. With a little help from the bolero_sd_organizer programme I now have a 9-deep directory structure, beneath which I have the same “Artist†and “Album†nested directories, with a small mp3 file and a load of playlists in the root. However something very strange has happened which makes me think it’s not going to work. I was happily playing an “album†playlist when, 7 tracks into the album, the player froze at the start of a new track having just gotten as far as loading the ID3 tags. No amount of ejecting and reinserting the card or powering off the head unit would make it load the card again – it just sat there with the “please wait†message forever. I thought I’d manage to break my head unit somehow. However I removed all the files off the card, put one mp3 file on it and tried again, hey presto it worked. So I reloaded all my files as before; it worked again, but jumping to the same track it froze again in exactly the same way. There wouldn't seem to be anything wrong with the playlist itself because it plays back fine from the card inserted into my PC via Windows Media Player. Has anyone experienced this before and any idea how I can stop it happening? Thanks in anticipation