Softronic flashing

The issue started a few months ago where my 997 was having cold misfires. The engine light would come on and the reading was multiple misfires. Otherwise, the car ran fine. I then changed the coils, plugs, air filter, temp sensor, battery, MAF sensor and solenoid valve adjusters. The cold start misfires would not go away. Finally, I had the car boroscoped and the Porsche dealer did not find anything wrong with the engine. After 12 hours of diagnostics at Porsche dealer, it came down to the clutch or reprograming the DME and losing the Softronic flashing. I decided to go with reprograming the DME which was the less expensive option. Since reprograming the DME, the car has not had any cold misfires. No one has ever touched the DME since the Softronic software flashing. According to the Porsche dealer, the software was corrupted. In hindsight, it would have been easy for me to have the DME flashed back to Porsche default, however I did not realise that the software could get corrupted. Hopefully my experience will help someone else in the future.

I'd suggest passing this on to Softronic too in case Scott misses the post. While I'd never thought of it and made the connection I've had firmware corruption in things like printers and NAS boxes. Reflashing seems to fix. I imagine a DME would be the same.

I did discuss it with Scott but he denied that this could ever happen.

I'm perplexed as to why you didn't just flash back to your stock programming to see if that made a difference before paying the dealership all that $$$? Or if you thought something was wrong with the Softronic flash you could also have just reflashed your car with the Softronic flash again. There are a number of things that get reset when a car is flashed so if the reflash fixed it there is no way for the dealer to say exactly what it was that was wrong and that the flash fixed, but again you should have been able to fix this yourself by simply flashing back to your stock flash which Softronic always provides.

Yeah firmware isn't supposed to change. My guess is it's something in hardware. Writing an adaptation or whatnot that goes wrong. Wouldn't have expected it if I hadn't seen it happen. Sort of surprised that he didn't suggest reflash with either the OEM or tuned file.

I'm just going by the facts. I took it to 3 top Porsche mechanics and no one thought it could be the software. However the only thing that fixed it was the flashing to factory default.

You may be misunderstanding me. Misfires happen, even with stock ECU programming, and your ECU learns and retains values based on how the car has been run over a period of time, whether your ECU was modified or not. Your ECU could have picked up one of it's learned values and somehow corrupted that value causing it to have a misfire or other problem while running. Flashing the ECU , whether back to stock, or to some modified map like Softronic will reset all those learned values, thus possibly flushing the source of your problem without it ever really being the "programming" itself. That's why I said if you simply would have flashed your ECU yourself using the Softronic cable/software either to your stock tune file or a modified file you could have tested for whether or not it was a learned value that was causing your issue as opposed to something else. Additionally, if you have a faulty sensor somewhere that will send bogus information to the ECU for one of the learned values (such as cam timing sensor) then you still run the risk of this same problem coming back in the future regardless of what ECU map you happen to be running, stock, Softronic , or some other tuned file. The ECU map file, the tune itself, conducts a number of checksums during the boot up process and if one of those fails an error is thrown that would have shown up in the PIWIS diagnostics, so if that wasn't the case, then it is a stronger possibility that some learned value in a table somewhere was corrupted/bad/out of range and thus causing the car to run less than perfectly. If your problem comes back at some point then I would try flashing your ECU using your stock file and see if that fixes the anomalous data issue. HTH! BTW there is nothing stopping you from flashing your car to the Softronic software and immediately testing to see if there are misfires, if there are, flash back to stock, if there aren't, then again, probably indicates the source of your problem is actually something else.

Thanks for the info. I will let you know if the problem ever come back.

The Op forgot to mention he purchased the car from the original owner that installed the software back in 2009. He purchased the car from him in 2010 and basically contacted me a couple weeks ago after it being in the car for over 5 years and explained the situation. I mentioned it has been 5 years and the software doesn't get corrupt and would have done this when it was initially installed if it had a problem. I also have no control over the car and what is done to it between 2 owners and that time frame. The file that is installed in the car is check summed and if it somehow was altered without the checksum being re calculated the car wouldn't run. The dealer by flashing it would have re-written the same file as the orig would be yet it also resets the learning parameters. The resetting may have fixed the issue in the DME yet the file isn't going to change or get corrupted pure and simple. Softronic provides a file in which is the same as the Dealer would have loaded yet either Tuned or Stock. The Map is separate from the learning parameters of the DME itself. The issue may also be that the Dual mass is no good and it has not caused the issue again yet since the timing etc is not as high and as mentioned the DME was reset. I tried to explain to the OP about programming and checksums etc yet he was not interested. I was also contacted after all the work was done and much of what is listed shouldn't have been done for misfires. The Dealer also stated the car had been taken to other places prior... The only confirmation with the Service manager of the Dealer was it was re-flashed and doesn't know what it specifically does or changes and that the problem may still be there and I have more knowledge in this type of matter. The Softronic map in which is an altered stock map cant get any more corrupt than an original Porsche map as installed by the factory. Since there is no defect in the product, the age of it being flashed , 2nd owner and so On, no I would not offer any compensation. Best Regards, Scott The op was also banned on 6speed and post taken down on ********. You will also notice as on this site and the the other sites he only joined to post .

Tapatalk was helping... Post was intended for elsewhere.

I had a similar problem with a Nissan many years ago. Problem was an intermittent fault with a sensor. Software that has been in the car for 5 years won't just start to cause problems. Kman is correct in saying that any hard reset would clear the problem temporarily. But, issue is likely to return when the sensor faults again.

I was just stating the facts in order to help others in case they ran into similar issue. It was the Porsche mechanic that said that he believed the software was corrupt and when he flashed it to factory default, the misfires went away. I believe I was banned from 6speed because they are a sponsor of Softronic and did not want to show someone with a bad experience with the software. They made the excuse that I used 2 different login names when in fact I registered using my name and email address. However, the second time that I logged in, I by mistake signed on using the Facebook credentials. That's why it showed my real name instead of my user name. I was shocked that they banned me for that. I explained the mistake to the admin person but no change in my status. The post was taking down from ******** for no reason either. I am surprised this happens in this day and age. What happened to freedom of speech ?

Oh Oh Oh I can answer that one! Freedom of Speech typically refers to the rights granted to citizens of the US by the US constitution which is all about rights vs. the government and has absolutely nothing to do with rights vs. another person or commercial entity. Ever see those signs about no shoes, no shirt no service or we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone? The same applies to a web forum, in the case of 6speed and ******** they are owned by a company (Internet Brands) and run solely to make $$$ for the mothership. If they don't like what you have to say they can/will nuke your account. Of course we can do the same here, but I usually like to get more to the heart of the matter when possible and expose things for what they really are. I don't think you'll deny that you signed up as a new user on multiple forums simply to disparage Softronic and their software, claiming that their software was corrupted and had somehow managed to make your car run poorly. The problem is that new users on a forum seldom have any credibility until they've built up a series of posts/replies across multiple topics. You post also borderline violates our forum posting rules with regard to unfairly disparaging sponsors or other entities. You certainly left out multiple key/pertinent facts in your original post but even in doing so I think you saw our members jump in and say what you were claiming doesn't make sense, both from a technical standpoint in terms of how flashing an ECU works, as well as a service/procedural standpoint in terms of what a Porsche dealership service person can and cannot do or ascertain through the use of a PIWIS . So yeah, I could do what ******** or 6speed did and simply ban your account, delete your posts and move on but instead I'd rather use this as a learning opportunity. 1) It's a learning opportunity for people who might be considering doing the same thing to some other company they have a potential dispute with in that they need to work it out with that company directly, trying to use a forum as a soapbox to air potentially unfounded grievances or wrongfully attack someone simply isn't the right path to an effective resolution. Other visitors or members can learn what NOT to do by your example. 2) It's a learning opportunity for you in that there are better ways to seek out what may be wrong with your car and what ECU tuning can and cannot do. Just think for a moment if you had come here first and asked our members what the possible causes were for the way your car was/is running. You would have been much better informed by the time you actually went to a service person and asked them to look at your car, you could have narrowed down the possibilities saving yourself a lot of time and I'm assuming a lot of money. Key takeaway, this site is for members to help other members. 3) It's a learning opportunity for anyone who may think that ECU programming just magically gets corrupted but also magically is able to fool checksum values and continue to operate. Of course there are many topic threads here where members can learn even more about ECU programming/tuning, simply use the Search feature and seek them out. If you don't understand something you read, just ask, members are happy to help. Last, but not least, I am inclined to close this topic thread as there isn't really anything more to be gained by keeping it open. Before I do, however, I think you do owe Softronic and the members of this forum an apology for your, shall we say reckless disregard for the forum rules, the information Softronic was trying to provide you and the way in which you approached the situation through your posting to this forum. I'll leave this topic open another 24 hours so that you may reply with an apology and then I will close this topic. By all means if you want to be a contributing member of this website then feel free to stick around and participate constructively with the rest of our members, they are a great bunch!

Sometimes I long for a simpler time: my 914 has analog electronic fuel injection with no software. Then I remember how that motor wants to stall out when slightly warm and I come to my senses. I had one of those moments a while back when I was updating the firmware in my vacuum cleaner.

Well I see no apology was issued which is a shame, but as I promised I am closing this thread. By all means let it be a lesson to people on how NOT to address an issue.