Occasional warning about dipped headlights

[Fejinwales]

Anything from four months to even as long as a year, occasionally when I start the car, I'll hear a beep, the word 'SERVICE' will appear on the dash and 'check dipped headlights' will show for a brief moment in the console display.

When this happens (whilst parked) I have to turn on the dipped headlights, then turn them off and turn off the ignition. When I turn it back on again the warning disappears, if I do the order wrong I may have to do it twice.

The problem is that it can even do this whilst driving. There have been two occasions when this has happened, both times when I turned my lights on whilst driving. The first time the passenger side bulb had in fact blown (taking a fuse with it), the second time however was when I joined a motorway (when I always turn dipped beams on - a throwback from when I was a biker in the seventies and eighties). On this occasion, when I got to the services doing the procedure mentioned earlier got rid of the warning - the bulb had not blown.

There's nothing in the handbook, I was wondering if this is some sort of random reminder to check the lights, or is it something else? I ask because it did it yesterday, the last time was on the M5 on my way up to Norwich - end of December last year - and it's bugging me.

I use the BOSCH bulbs that are apparently the factory options and everything else is fine, including recently having a new battery, new timing belt was fitted about 30,000 miles ago, alternator working fine (garage told me so).

Any advice would be appreciated.

[mickthemaverick]

I am just working through some older unanswered posts and I saw this one. Did you find an answer to the problem?