Hi all, I want to know if these is a BMW documented procedure for MINIs for completely resetting the ECU?

I have an R57 and R55, though I'd imagine procedure would be the same for both.

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I understand you could disconnect the battery completely, but there are still capacitors in the car - how long would it take for them to lose all power? You could touch the positive and negative leads together after disconnecting battery, but I wanted to make sure thats safe to do or if the fast capacitor discharge from doing this would hurt anything.

Thanks

Disconnecting the battery would be the best way. I'd not short the positive and negative cables together. If one of the cabin doors is open that would/should have some interior light on and that drains any residual power. You could turn on the emergency flashers too I think. They work or should work even if the engine is off, the ignition is off.

Or you could just disconnect the battery and wait...

A problem with disconnecting the battery is the connecting it again. If you fumble this you can power glitch the electronics and that can bring about possible issues that of course can be addressed by another battery disconnect.

thanks @RockC that makes total sense I don't know why I didn't think of leaving a light on or door open.

Anyway I've already replaced the battery and a majority of the codes went away, now I only have 18 real codes instead of 62! Ha.

Some codes -- but 18 is a lot more than I would expect -- will go away as you drive the car. I remember with one car with a steering wheel/angle sensor after I changed the battery and brought the bad battery back to the dealer a tech offered to reset this sensor for me. But the warning message had gone away before I even reached the dealer.

Some codes -- these are called permanent -- can only be cleared by the engine controller after so many warm up cycles with the error absent. Some take just 3 warm up cycles. Some take more.

Yep - there was a lot because I bought it as salvage title. It was in an accident but I saw the photos and it wasn't bad. Car drives great but most of the errors are related to the airbag system needing to be reset (rollbar sensor, pretensioner, that sort of thing)

Inpa.. if you have a laptop inpa is a must have for any mini owner..if you unfamiliar with it , just Google it.. alot of good info there and northamericanmotoring.com also on it.

Thanks @MiniManAdam . is INPA the same as ISTA? I'm actually in the processing of setting up ISTA software now

I belive so yes... if you need help with it I'd advise pm'ing adriancl , hes a wizard. He helped me a ton, without him ? Geez , my car wouldn't be half of what it is..