Can the Diagbox 'Faults Journal' be cleared?

[Bob L'eponge]

Hi all,

When checking my X7 C5, 1.6 Hdi (2009) a lot of faults come up in the 'Faults Journal' option in Diagbox. Almost all of these relate to things like temporary 'coherence faults' relating to the parking sensors (caused by the sensors icing up in the winter) or a loose number plate bulb. No faults come up if a diagnostic session is run, so there are no faults to be cleared via that menu. I would like to clear out all these inconsequential fault entries in the Faults Journal, but have not been able to find a way to do this. Anyone know how, or if this can be done at all?

Cheers!

[addo]

That log is resident in the BSI; with Lexia you clear it that way.

[Bob L'eponge]

Hi addo,

How exactly do you clear this log?

This is what I have been able to work out so far:

The 'Faults Journal' or 'Faults Log' seems to be maintained independently of the faults stored in the various ECUs. It contains all generated faults, including temporary ones that are not shown at all if you access an ECU (including the BSI itself) directly via the Diagnosis, Repair or Maintenance options. It also contains faults relating to every ECU on the vehicle and it also retains those fault records even if the relevant fault code has been cleared from an ECU.

This log is available via the small drop-down menu in the top left hand corner of the Diagbox screen but this menu only allows the codes to be viewed, not erased.

The log can also be accessed via the 'Expert' section of the diagnostic and repair options. In this case the way the results are viewed can be changed (for example, it is possible to set a filter so that no faults are displayed that happened between zero and 100,000 km) but the faults are still stored and will once again be displayed if the filters are re-set.

As you say, this log appears to be stored in the BSI itself. Thing is, I haven't found any way to re-set it, rather than just filter the results. I did click on the 'Configure BSI' option in Diagbox under the Repair - BSI menu to see if what options came up, but this simply brought up a screen saying the application could not access the (I presume Actia) server, which my version of Diagbox cannot do.

I wonder if it would be erased if the BSI was reset? I also wonder if doing this would be a wise thing to do, even if it did work!

[addo]

I don't believe a BSI "reset" will affect it.

On Lexia it's a separate item to the BSI, simply described as a fault log; the first click takes you to a message along the lines of "Faults present and log full".

You read the log, as you say all manner of faults are there, they can usually be sorted by frequency of appearance or chronology. There should also be another option coming up for erasing the log. Not yet running Diagbox, I don't know how it may be linguistically couched.

[Ben82]

Are you sure you can clear it? Mine is chock full of oil pressure faults from when I had a duff sensor, making finding other faults in the log a tedious task, pretty sure I looked for an erase option and couldn't find one. But maybe at the time I was mostly looking to clear the oil pressure ones rather than clearing them all. Would be handy if I could start from scratch though

[Bob L'eponge]

Are you sure you can clear it?

No, I'm not sure, but I would appreciate a confirmation, one way or another.

[falling-out-with-my-car]

in order to cancel journal faults using a lexia you must read the faults one by one first, the lexia will not let you just cancel faults without you reading them. I went round in circles for a while figuring this one out myself.my C5 mk2 has been sitting for 6 months and with a low battery voltage had developed a mind of its own and faults i had never seen before, a brand new battery and the lexia solved all the issues. whether or not you repair a diagnosed fault it seems that the ECU still remembers the fault until you clear it with the Lexia. read each fault first then remove it , then once they are cleared do a Global Diagnostic to see if the faults return again. make sure you charge the car battery for at least 24 hours before you plug in the lexia. low voltage on the car battery seems to play havoc with diagnostics on the lexia. hot weather battery failure is quite common these days so if your vechicle is parked up for any length of time consider using a battery conditioning charger.

[GiveMeABreak]

Err this was 8 years ago.....