V50 - 2007, 152k miles. Love my car but every now and again it does strange things.
The most recent issue is the car settings keep reverting, I'm guessing back to factory. I set to unlock only driver's door and flash the lights when I lock it. Then have to set it again. It's been happening more frequently now.

Any feedback on how to correct this is appreciated. THX!

 

The most likely issue is the ECM, but that is only a guess. Welcome to the world of owning an older luxury car. For whatever reason, while far from affecting 100% of luxury cars on the road, it is not a particularly uncommon issue, and by "luxury" car I mean pretty much all brands where there is significant use of memory features. My S60 loses its drivers seat/mirror settings occasionally, so obviously Volvo is not immune. Because this primarily occurs well after the warranty period and to the 2nd or 3rd owner who by this time are in the "economy" mode of car ownership most people jut live with the idiosyncrasy rather than spend tons of money chasing the problem. Every once in a while there will be a more significant failure of the ECM that forces the repair and then the added bonus of those hiccups being gone is discovered, but I certainly wouldn't recommend switching it out as an experiment. Just too darn much money and the chances that you have some other issue that spurs the ECM change is not that likely, although the increased frequency of the issue may indicate what is coming. My experience is more general across all brands rather than Volvo specific, so maybe someone else will chime in.

 

The ECM does not store any memory settings.

On the V50, the CEM stores the lock settings.


As for your power seat pkrface, this is probably the power seat module. Less expensive than an ECM, but as you said, probably not worth it just for seat memory.

 

I knew somebody would come along with more Volvo specific info

Yeah, thanks for the input on the seat. Definitely something I can live with and I am usually pretty picky.

 

Thanks so much for the info. Going to have to find out about the ECM and CEM and go from there. True it's more of an annoyance than anything else, but since it seems to be getting more frequent, want to see about nipping it in the bud before other electronics/memory type things start cropping up. My battery is 4 yrs old and I was going to get that replaced soon. Maybe sooner than I thought to see if that might have anything at all to do with it.
I appreciate the feedback. I am new to participating in forums, altho I do read them, but couldn't find any info remotely similar to mine. THX again!