The wife has our mk4 on an overseas trip. Suddenly today, without having crossed any country borders for over a week, the system will not boot up but gets stuck on "Loading settings". Obviously this means there is no satnav, etc. The light by the SOS button is not lit (neither green nor red).

I talked her through doing a reboot of the system, but this didn't help.

The car is from 2024 and has 1985 software. Having read up here about various things people have used to resolve this issue, some are things that I think my wife would be prepared to try but some are not...

• Start and cancel SOS call

• Pull fuses for instrument cluster and infotainment system

• Disconnect the battery

I'd like to hear from any drivers of mk4 with 1985 software who have experienced these symptoms what worked for them.

The reason I mention not crossing country borders is that I believe sometimes the issue has been related to the SIM or eSIM not achieving coverage in a new country. Since the car entered the current country 10 days ago and the problem only started today, I am sceptical that mobile coverage would explain the problem – but if others have experience that it can take that long before the system goes haywire, I'd be interested.

what year is your mk4?

Most likely your telematic module needs updated

1 hour ago, wellaflex said:

what year is your mk4?

4 hours ago, beneix said:

The car is from 2024 and has 1985 software.

Mine is doing the same now. SOS module error has returned since turning the privacy settings off for the sat nav etc.

How do I go about getting the telematics updated? Is it a dealership only job?

Don't want to sound pessimistic but I had my SOS module changed TWICE under warranty, once in 2023 and second time one month ago. My car is MY2021 with only 35k. Both times the navigation was messed up, stacked on different location and then it solved by it's own. Tried everything from fake SOS call, disconnect the battery but nothing helped. In the end, they changed the module and claimed that they had the latest software for the Module updated.

Update: I had the car looked at by a dealership yesterday. They did diagnostics but said they couldn't find anything wrong. They gave me a sticker with the chassis number on that they asked me to put on the dashboard so that next time I get the issue I can take a photo of the dashboard with the VIN number in the photo...this is because I had already given them a photo that my wife took when it happened last time, but they said this was not enough to validate work being done under warranty (?!).