2006 E Class COMAND a ticking time bomb?
 

I just purchased my first MB, an E55, two weeks ago. At the 200 mile mark the COMAND froze up on me. It says Audio Please Wait and never "boots" up. I took it to the dealer and it seemed to stump them. They put in a call to national MB. National states that it is a 2006 software issue and they won't have a fix until mid December. There is not a previous 2006 version of the software they can install instead and the 2005 software is not compatible. The dealer was able to reset it by pulling out and plugging back in the 40amp fuse. Well, it froze up again this weekend and the 40 amp fuse trick has not worked this time. Has anybody else had this problem? Does anybody have a better solution than "you'll have to wait a month"?

Based on a forum search it looks like COMAND has had it share of critics over the years but it is really disappointing on a 90K car that is in its fourth model year to have it's COMAND center crap out at the 200 mile mark and the best MB can say it talk to us in December. Very frustrating!

How odd. I just traded in a '01 C320 that was equipped with COMAND, and the system worked flawlessly for over 70K miles. I was unable to get Voice COMAND on my '06 CLK. The car is wired for it, but it is not offered for the U.S. at this time.

Had a Command failure in my 05 E320 4M, Dealer over the phone had said it was most likely some sort of "portal". Turned out it was the dash mounted actual Command unit itself. Symptoms; would not turn on at all. However on one or 2 occassions it did but eventually went totally off and would never restart. Not a big deal took the car in and it was replaced in less than an hour with a new one. Has been fine since. This has been the only fault I have had with this vehicle since new in Feb.

Sosh, I wish the solution for my car was as simple as that. They already tried a head unit swap and the problem was still there. I'll try to get a more definitive answer tomorrow from them.

Could be the portal for the audio, also I believe refered to as the gateway. Its some sort of an interface unit.