I brought back my Octavia from the UK earlier where it has languished since the lockdown.

 

I was bored on the journey and did something silly which I have a vague recollection I did once before.

 

I wanted to change the clock to CET while I was driving, I pressed & held the lower part of the rocker switch on the wiper stalk and got the menu display, tried settings or parameters and it said vehicle needed to be at standstill (I had forgotten) instead of selecting MFD again I selected "radio" and now the thing is locked on that blank screen showing only the time (still wrong!) and the mileage and trip, cant get the MFD back for fuel consumption, fuel remaining, temperature etc. If I open a door the vehicle graphic shows so the thing is not frozen as such its just I cannot get back to the menu.

 

I think the reason may be because I have removed the OE radio and fitted a Chinese head unit, when I do a VCDS scan it shows no communication with radio.

 

I have a feeling I may have made this mistake before but cant recall how I resolved it, possibly by disconnecting the vehicle battery, I dont really want to because I lost all the MPG data when the battery was disconnected for the confinement and the trip from the UK to France will have given a good average MPG, the vehicle is to be sold and it always looks dodgy if there is no trip data.

 

So any ideas how to get back to the menu, I have tried pressing and holding all the controls that I can think of, holding on the lower trip reset button does cause the head unit to reboot so something is going on.

 

If all else fails I will have to try refitting the original radio.

If you can wait a bit I'll recreate your steps and give you the button sequence to get the MFD back.

That is very kind of you MicMac.

 

I just hope you dont end up trapped in the same black hole as me, remember no good deed goes unpunished

 

I take it that you still have the standard radio?

@J.R. (Hartley?!)

 

Whenever I disable the MFD it displays the main menu immediately upon pressing either of the buttons, usually when on it takes a long press of the UP/DOWN button to show the menu.

 

I wouldn't think a change of radio had anything to do with it, then again.

 

Ensure you are seated, doors closed and ignition on when you try accessing the MFD, also give it 10-20 seconds to clear should it be displaying something e.g. Service Now!, Fasten Seatbelt, Top Up Screen Wash etc.

 

Possibly holding a button down as you turn the ignition on may bring it up, I would advise caution though as it may take you to a secret settings/menu and if you can't see what you're doing...

 

The 20 seconds thing is a good one, I am not known for patience!

 

Will also try the holding down on power up, not much left to lose.

 

Failing that I am quite confident that the default on a power up reboot is the MFD, if it isn't then I'm screwed.

I remember when I fitted a Columbus to my previous Octavia.

 

It had the same problem before I did a firmware update to it.

 

If I went into Radio menu it would freeze. Usually fixed by turning the radio off. But that might not work for you.

 

I think really the best permanent fix would be to deselect the radio module with VCDS to tell the car it doesn't have a radio installed anymore. There may be an adjustment to be made in the instruments module too to disable the Radio menu.

Phil E, I have tried many permutations in VCDS to get rid of the faultcode, could not find a no radio fitted option, I may even have recoded it to the wrong one. Worryingly since swapping the radio it has always brought up a fault code saying instrument cluster faulty but it has worked perfectly until now where I have found its achilles heel.

 

I have even more fault codes on the Yeti from the head unit swap as that has/had a factory bluetooth setup which no longer works and each start up its trying to find and pair with phones belonging to the previous owner which I am not able to remove from its memory, the car in theory now has 2 bluetooth systems neither of which are working but my only bluetooth phone is not used for calls anyway.

 

Editted, you may be onto something re a radio setting in the instrument cluster controller, I never thought of looking their.

 

It would be good to get all those non comm fault codes sorted before its sold.

Edited 20 July, 20205 yr by J.R.

You also need to go into the canbus gateway installation list and remove it from there:

 

https://www.ross-tech.com/vcds/tour/installation-list.php

 

But thinking about it. Is your stereo switched on and off via canbus? If so this may interfere with that function.

 

I think so because I had to change the canbus gateway for a later revision one because of battery discharge problems.

 

I was reflecting on the problem while driving back in the Yeti, went to the same menu and had to stop myself from trying it there

 

I think simply interrogating the controller with VCDS might nudge it back to the default MFD display, it might also have a new and perhaps significant fault code, seems like the best place to start.

 

Thanks for the link, I will read it and learn!

MFD problem resolved by doing a VCDS scan which will have connected to and communicated with the instrument controller.

 

I had a look at the coding re the radio etc and think I know more what the problem there is but not how to resolve it, I am asking here first before creating a thread as I think one of you may know the answer.

 

The fault code problems of not communicating with the removed radio etc may have been due to my changing the can gateway controller at the same time and recoding it for my vehicle, perhaps incorrectly.

 

VCDS is showing 2 "Installed controllers" that are not present and hence trys but cannot communicate with them, one is the OE radio now removed, the other is Satnav that I have never had but I suspect was fitted to the vehicle the later canbus gateway came from.

 

Now here is the confusing bit, in the long coding of the canbus gateway these options are unchecked.

 

Under Byte 4 navigation module 37 is unchecked but shows up on the installed modules screen of VCDS, no options at all are ticked for byte 4 and its coding is 00

 

Under Byte 5 again nothing is ticked, coding is 00 yet Radio Analogue module 56 shows up on the installed modules screen of VCDS.

 

Under byte 6 Can gateway standard is selected.

 

If I look through the printouts of my earlier scans I should be able to find the long coding for the original canbus gateway controller.

 

Below hopefully is the autoscan showing the fault codes showing at present, ignore the heater flap one, that is always clicking away.

Log-TMBGS21Z862234806.txt

 

Any ideas? I thought of perhaps checking the options, saving the new coding then deleting them again?

 

Or should I start this as a seperate thread?

Edited 21 July, 20205 yr by J.R.

Your VCDS version is out of date, you should update to the latest version...

 

Still, 37 is shown as not registered. This means your aftermarket headunit, is claiming to be at that address and therefore you should add it to the installation list. I would also keep 56 in the installation list as it appears to be present too.

 

For futre reference, it's more helpful to post a full autoscan rather than just an installation list.