Strange what a battery can do

[madrob6]

My B5 hadn't moved for a while due to not being needed anymore and that combined with a battery that is at the very least 3 years old (but probably much older as the previous owner said it was in there when he got it) meant my battery got rather flat.

First thing this did was make the passenger side front door behave very strangely. Although the engine would fire up fine the door wouldn't always lock and sometimes pop open again after locking. Vag-com showed that the ccm believed the door was locked when it was unlocked and vice versa

the other thing that happened is that the alarm siren stopped sounding. I have enabled mine to 'beep' when the alarm is activated/de-activated along with the hazard flash. The hazards would flash but no beep and when opening the faux-locked door the hazards flashed but no siren.

Gave the battery a charge and the car started up fine and ran without any problems so I left it a week and then it started up but didn't turn over so easily, third week it was absolutely dead to the point where the alarm didn't disarm when I unlocked it.

So this weekend I treated it to a new battery and everything works fine again! So if you're having strange electrical issues and can't figure out why check the battery.