The window was slightly down and the doors were locked so alarms were on, I presume he set it off while I was grabbing a KFC. When arriving back to my car I unlocked it fine, but when trying to start the car it was completely dead, nothing at all. After a couple of minutes to my relief it started, any ideas why this happened?

? maybe a built in safety feature?

battery run down?

Thing is it seems fine now starts everytime, so battery seems OK. I also wondered if it was some sort of imobiliser saftey feature?

You said the alarm was on?

When you lock the car you can disable the motion sensors by clicking the "lock" button twice in succession which causes the light on the wiper stalk to flash to a different pattern. It saves the dog setting the alarm off when it moves around.

When it first happened to us we were on a Poole to Guernsey Condor ferry and left our last dog in the car. Window well open. We had not set the alarm properly so as she moved the alarm activated. We were tannoyed back to the car. It's a very loud alarm in an area like that. Trouble was, Heidi thought we were back at the car, got excited and then we had to leave her again.

Thanks for the heads up on the double click, funny thing is since this happened I can put my radio on without the key in the ignition and im pretty certain I couldn't do this before.

You can switch the radio on without the key in the ignition and it switches off automatically after about 20 minutes.

I do that when I'm washing the car...... it avoids the risk of someone jumping in and driving off!

Had same problem today, car wouldn't start, I fiddled around with the battery terminals and still nothing, when the bonnet got clicked shut, something happened and there was now lights when I switch the ignition on, but wouldn't start. I did this again with the bonnet and got the ignition lights on opened and closed the boot and the car started 1st time. I'm confused, any ideas?.

Have you had a replacement windscreen?

The Mrs MINI wrote:

Have you had a replacement windscreen?

No, why do you ask?

I know it sounded like a random question!

An ill fitting front screen (where the bonding is not sealed) can lead to water getting into the reversing mirrors which in some MINIs have the sensors for door locks & alarms etc in them....

When you said the keys worked after the bonnet shut, I thought that maybe that could be the cause......

OK thanks for the heads up, something to get checked.