And that won't work on a BMW. It trips a switch tht will have to be reset. It's not capacitor memory.
Also a side not te reason you can't use a cheap parts store scanner is that a those year BMW does not use a sguare port it uses a round obd plug they won't have.
Not trying to come off strong on this. I have just dealt with it mny times and hate to see you chase your tale.

Sorry one more thing. You can do the battery an that will erase the memory but light are mechanical trigger if that makes sense.

I'd pay the $275 and have a Bavarian technician tell you what is going on. I know first hand that a new ECU for an 05 x5 will run you $1500 (At least that was the price 17 days ago) just for the ECU (no labor). You might already have a spendy situation with the transmission but you don't want to ad a new ECU to the bill because you tried to save $275 with a paper clip and cooked something.

2002 does have the square OBDII port, as well as the round BMW plug under the hood. However, an OBDII scanner will not reset the trans error. Ask me how I know.

Yes you can! My friend is a factory trained BMW tech and he had me do this when my computer flipped everything to Kilometers, It was doing a few other wierd things as well. I disconnected the battery touched the positive and negitive for 30 seconds, reconnected and everything was back to normal.

That will just wipe out the memory on things that are held by capacitors. The safe modes/oil lights etc is a mech switch.
An once again there is nothing to short using the paper clip. You are simply grounding out a switch. It is completely aside from ecu. He asked how to do it himself. I wouldn't show or suggest it if he would fry something. I hope you get it looked at regardless.

they have to be obdII complyant and the connector cant be no further than 12'' from the steering colum..worked for bmw for many years, years ago.



http://www.m3forum.net/m3forum/showthread.php?t=343518

Yes it does sometimes. Many of the earlier ones used an adapter. It's weird.
What I was trying to explain was the cheap scanner won't Reset the codes. We tried a bunch of them. Just last week on a 99
M3 auto. You have to use factory tool to do it. They have greater capabilities as far as doing the hard resets. That's why we use the old reliable paper clip. I am pretty sure one of the pins is
#7 if I get time tomorrow I will look up the other one.
I would say again that this will not fix the problem. Transmission codes are not like knock sensors on the fritz etc. have it looked at.

yep it sometimes worx and other times it wont work on hard codes,but the cheap scanner will read obd II codes which i mentioned on on my first quoat,not all will clear them but most will read them..i have a blue point mini scanner that will read them and clear most of them..if it gets too detailed then ill drag out my otc genisys and go to the europien section that i have for the german cars..

The Peake R5/FCX3 code reader and reset tool is a great item to get. BMW only uses the bare minimum that the gov makes them for OBDII codes, unless your doing a smog test, they're a mostly worthless. The peake reader will tell you everything you need to know as well as reset most codes. It will not reset the transmission/airbag codes but it does work great for just about everything engine related.