WHY WON’T MY MINI’S WINDOWS GO UP AND DOWN WHEN THE DOORS ARE OPENED?

Q My wife’s 2016 Mini One has developed a driver’s window problem. The automatic lowering and raising on opening the door has failed; using the interior switch to operate the window only moves it 2in up or down. I tried the suggested window resets, to no avail. Just before, a yellow warning message flashed up but it disappeared before I could read it: no faults have displayed on the readout. Any ideas?

– RH

A

This is the F56 Mini produced from 2014 onwards. The frameless windows on this generation of Mini, which push up into the door seals automatically upon closure, can sometimes fail to do so, which sounds like your issue.

Usually this is easily cleared by the reset procedure you mention – holding the window switch in position at the end of the window’s downward travel for around 15 seconds. Note that this has to be carried out with the engine running, so if you have tried this reset with the engine switched off, that might be why it hasn’t solved the problem.

However, if this doesn’t work, it sounds like the issue is a little more involved. Happily, even a worst-case scenario here shouldn’t be too costly.

The first thing would be to take the car to a franchised Mini or BMW dealer, to discover whether that yellow warning message you noticed logged any fault codes in the car’s computer. That could point to the source of the trouble relatively easily.

If no fault code is stored, then while the car is at the dealer I’d ask them to reset the FRM, which is commonly referred to as the footwell module. This is the black box that controls the functions of the window and it’s located, unsurprisingly, behind a piece of trim in the passenger footwell.

If that’s not the problem, the FRM itself could be defective (particularly if water has leaked into it, so it’s worth checking it) – or you could have a defective door handle or latch switch.

In addition, there’s one other slightly less obvious thing to check: is the battery still in good health? Once batteries start getting weak, they can cause spurious electrical faults. More than one Mini owner has found misbehaving windows to be the first of several problems that stemmed from a weak battery.

iPressing issue: what is causing a Mini’s automatic window-sealing system to fail?