Hello all!
I decided to post as I really am having a problem with a car I have, its a W220 2003 S320 CDI.
Its kind of an odd problem (although one I'm sure some of you have seen before!) in that when you go out to the car, usually in the morning, get in and drive, quite often the Comand unit will fail to play any audio. The screen will show the usual Mercedes badge as it starts up, then will stay off. If you press the on button, it will start up again, get to the radio screen then 10 seconds later a message "sound unavailable" will appear. After a random amount of time, the radio will suddenly spring into life and all will be fine. This could be anywhere from a couple of minutes to an hours worth of driving before this will happen. Once it starts to work, it's absolutely fine and doesn't cut out again, it will stay on for the trip.
We thought it was the fiber cable and replaced that, although it doesn't seem to have changed things.
From the bit of research I have done, I think I have worked out I have a Comand-APS NTG1, using the MOST system? The car was made in 09/03 and I think would have been one of the early cars to have this system? From what I have seen and is a very common question around here is the engineering menu. I do not want to enable anything in the secret menu, I just wanted to use the diagnostics feature is all, to see if the system itself reported any errors.
However I cannot seem to get into the Engineering menu using the "End call+Upper Left+Audio" buttons whilst in the language menu, or using the "mute+end call+serv" buttons. Does anyone know how to do this or am I doing something wrong, perhaps there is a trick to it? Everyone else says the above combination works, however it does not seem to for me!!
I managed to get into the MOST status page. The diagnostics menu in here isn't very useful it would seem.
I thought perhaps I have a new firmware on the headunit which is preventing me accessing the menu, however using the MOST status page, this seems like the very original firmware the car came with? Or am I looking at the totally wrong thing?
I upgraded the firmware of the HU in the car to the latest according to here: http://www.mercupgrades.com/comand+aps+faq-faq-10.html
When it came back on, it worked and was playing the radio. I tested it loads last night, locking it and letting it sleep for a few minutes then trying again. I also left it for about an hour then went back to it, and then a further 2 hours and went back to it and each time it was playing and functioning as it should. Brilliant I thought.
I went out this morning and no sound. However I don't get the "sound unavailable" message anymore, it just has a blank on the radio stations, the CD actually recognizes the track and everything just won't play.
I just went into the MOST status page again, and interestingly when I click on components to check out their software versions (did this last night), it comes up with a message "no nav connected" "no tel connected" "no DVD connected" etc everytime I try to go into one of the components.
I assume this is because of a fault with one of them around the car, which is causing fault with the rest?
Before I did the firmware update, when I went into the MOST status and looked at the status of the AGW, it couldn't correctly report the software, manufacturing data, make, model etc. It would just appear as "N/A" or "0000000" and after the update, everything reported correctly with all the information. I was sure this was going to fix it
Any help much appreciated, this is the first time I have looked at a Mercedes before and is totally different system to what I am used to. Thanks in advance!
I decided to post as I really am having a problem with a car I have, its a W220 2003 S320 CDI.
Its kind of an odd problem (although one I'm sure some of you have seen before!) in that when you go out to the car, usually in the morning, get in and drive, quite often the Comand unit will fail to play any audio. The screen will show the usual Mercedes badge as it starts up, then will stay off. If you press the on button, it will start up again, get to the radio screen then 10 seconds later a message "sound unavailable" will appear. After a random amount of time, the radio will suddenly spring into life and all will be fine. This could be anywhere from a couple of minutes to an hours worth of driving before this will happen. Once it starts to work, it's absolutely fine and doesn't cut out again, it will stay on for the trip.
We thought it was the fiber cable and replaced that, although it doesn't seem to have changed things.
From the bit of research I have done, I think I have worked out I have a Comand-APS NTG1, using the MOST system? The car was made in 09/03 and I think would have been one of the early cars to have this system? From what I have seen and is a very common question around here is the engineering menu. I do not want to enable anything in the secret menu, I just wanted to use the diagnostics feature is all, to see if the system itself reported any errors.
However I cannot seem to get into the Engineering menu using the "End call+Upper Left+Audio" buttons whilst in the language menu, or using the "mute+end call+serv" buttons. Does anyone know how to do this or am I doing something wrong, perhaps there is a trick to it? Everyone else says the above combination works, however it does not seem to for me!!
I managed to get into the MOST status page. The diagnostics menu in here isn't very useful it would seem.
I thought perhaps I have a new firmware on the headunit which is preventing me accessing the menu, however using the MOST status page, this seems like the very original firmware the car came with? Or am I looking at the totally wrong thing?
I upgraded the firmware of the HU in the car to the latest according to here: http://www.mercupgrades.com/comand+aps+faq-faq-10.html
When it came back on, it worked and was playing the radio. I tested it loads last night, locking it and letting it sleep for a few minutes then trying again. I also left it for about an hour then went back to it, and then a further 2 hours and went back to it and each time it was playing and functioning as it should. Brilliant I thought.
I went out this morning and no sound. However I don't get the "sound unavailable" message anymore, it just has a blank on the radio stations, the CD actually recognizes the track and everything just won't play.
I just went into the MOST status page again, and interestingly when I click on components to check out their software versions (did this last night), it comes up with a message "no nav connected" "no tel connected" "no DVD connected" etc everytime I try to go into one of the components.
I assume this is because of a fault with one of them around the car, which is causing fault with the rest?
Before I did the firmware update, when I went into the MOST status and looked at the status of the AGW, it couldn't correctly report the software, manufacturing data, make, model etc. It would just appear as "N/A" or "0000000" and after the update, everything reported correctly with all the information. I was sure this was going to fix it
Any help much appreciated, this is the first time I have looked at a Mercedes before and is totally different system to what I am used to. Thanks in advance!
