Here's a story of the most amazing electrical shenanigans on my 1998 A6 Avant; has anybody else experienced the like and has anyone any advice as to what can be going on?

1) About two weeks ago the alarm and indicators started going off at random and for varying periods of time when the car was locked. I disabled the sound alarm to pacify the neighbours ( you can tell by the spelling that I live in the UK, and, incidentally it's behind the rear right wheel arch ) and was prepared to live with the occasional light flashing until I could get some professional advice. After a couple of days the fault seemed to cure itself so I left it.

2) A couple of days later the interior lights took up the flashing habit whilst I was driving and a biker stopped me to say that my hazard warning lights were flashing in sequence too. He was very impressed. I managed to put a stop to that little game by turning the interior lighting to 'O' but on the other two settings they still occasionally try it on.

3) Lately a new and and even more wonderful trick has appeared. Every time I open or close the rear estate door all four windows go down and the empty spaces sit there looking at me in a kind of mute triumph as if to say 'And now what are you going to do. matey?'

4) The remote locking/unlocking has now stopped working and I'm reduced to the old fashioned key in the doorlock method.

Now I appreciate an interesting life as much as the next man and I've always enjoyed involving cars but, despite the fact that I'm presently providing a lot of happiness to my neighbours and other onlookers, I feel that it's time to re-establish the man over machine principle. I'm pretty sure that some electrical control unit is running its own little programme but which one might it be and where can it be found? Are there any experts out there who cold help me regain control? Any advice would be most gratefully received. Best Wishes.

 

This problem is gonna be more simple than you might think.
All of these symptoms can be caused by a malfunctioning: door latch, trunk latch, or even a hood latch.
If one or more of these latches are malfunctioning the comfort control module doesn't know whether to s*** or go blind.
Its possible to monitor each of these latches with a VAG COM, if you don't have one take it to the dealer and have them check which latch is going crazy, (NOTE A FAULTY LATCH WON'T ALWAYS THROW FAULT CODES)
If the dealer can't find any latches malfunctioning i would say either the ground to the comfort control module is bad or the module itself has gotten wet from rainy weather. What happens there is water builds up in the pleanum because the drain under the battery gets leaves and crap stuck in the tube causing water to find its way into the vehicle through the ecm box or the pollen filter box destroying your module that sits under the carpet.

 

Thanks Auditech. I've started by looking at the central locking unit under the footwell and I found that it had water in and a couple of chips on the motherboard had blown. That water must have been there for over a year! If a replacement unit doesn't solve all of the problems I'll follow up on the door locks. Best wishes.