Ok, this isn't Skoda, but a VW Lupo, but lets face it, there's a good amount of part sharing there .

My wife's Lupo failed to start on Monday, so off to GSF for a new battery, which I fitted today. I also did the service that's been overdue since september (the car only does about 3k miles a year, as we travel to work together most of the time).

I wasn't surprised that the radio code was lost, so it came up 'SAFE' when the battery was replaced. It's a standard VW Beta unit with a CD changer

What did surprises me was that when I'd scanned the car for fault codes, done a throttle body alignment, and reset the service interval (and thanks to VRStu's page, enabled anti-hijack), the radio worked. I *think* I have the code for it in the service book, but i don't have the radio manual. I'm not 100% it's the original one- before we bought the car it had lost it's code, and when I first got VAG-COM i found it was incorrectly coded- it didn't have the CD player coded, even though it worked.

More slightly surprising things- the radio remembered all it's presets, but the electric windows needed resetting for one-touch.

Now, I think I remember something in the workshop manuals that states that the radio is matched to the instrument panel, and that if you take the radio out and refit it to the same car, it won't ask for the code.

My question is this: Is the above true, and if so, why did it come up 'SAFE', and, further to that, what fixed it? Does putting the radio into DIAG mode make it re-check the pairing to the instruments?

Mine used to come up with safe after unplugging the battery but then normal service resumed after 30secs or so without doing anything to it. That was a symphony in my octy though and it was coded to the car.