[smassey321]

Combox is on the left side of the hatch just inside the removable cover. The combox bracket can be removed by taking out 3 screws which makes it easier to get to the forward facing wiring and MOST fiber. Make sure the i-drive is awake and check for 12 volts on the combox wiring. Pin 1 or 2. Then check for a red light coming out one of the green and black fiber optics. Check for water in the bottom of the storage area.

 

[smassey321]

Did you recently have your passenger air bag replaced? Several have found their Bluetooth antenna got disconnected during the repair.

 

[smassey321]

Since I had the front pax airbag fixed Bluetooth has been weak, but that was quite some time ago so I learnt to live with it I suppose, this am is stopped all together, everything looks ok but it does not show up on my phone. By everthing looks ok I mean the car is saying look for BMW 5...... in pairing mode but phone cannot see it. Where is the antenna connection that may be open now ( assuming it was lightly connected after airbag but maybe a pothole finally disturbed it ). I assume the said connection is behind dash so how to get to it ?

This shows where the antenna is.
https://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9260103&postcount=6

 

[smassey321]

Drivers airbag does not cause issues. It is the passenger one that affects the bt antenna. Now that I think about it, a disconnected antenna probably won't cause the spinning circle. If you can scan the car that might give you more info however a completely dead combox won't respond and thus returns no codes. Ebay combox are about $125 and easy to re-sell if that does not fix the issue. Just get one from an E series. F series don't work on our cars. E90 ones are easy to get and work fine in E70. I swapped mine between cars when I was trying to solve an issue.

Getting a used combox will cause your BMW assist to fail but you probably are not using that anyway. You may get an SOS error but that can be removed in 10 minutes by coding.