Wierd problem with my Head Unit

I'm doubting that anyone can help me with this, but its worth a try. I have an Alpine CDA 9815 that I installed about 6-8 months ago. Up till now everything about has worked fine. My problems just started today. There are really only two things that are going wrong. One, whenever the head unit starts up (turn on the ignition) the CD player is always paused. It remembers where it left off playing and everything, its just that its paused. Once I un-pause it seems to work fine. The other thing that it does is that when it is all booted up and running fine playing, if you pop of the face plate and then put it back on it will boot back up and start playing but the screen will display "Eject" instead of the song info like it should. Also when this happens you cannot control anything except the volume. All the buttons "beep" when you press them, but there is no response from the head unit. Also if you do the same thing with the face plate while listening to the radio it seems to boot up normally. It displays the station and all of the buttons operate, however when you switch to the CD it once again displays "Eject" on the screen. I hope that I was able to describe the symptoms in a way that is readable, if anyone has any more questions let me know. Conrad

doesnt really sound like you have any problems at all, the pause problem is probley just a feature that the hu has, read the manual and see if you can turn it off or anything, and about the face, i dont think its good at all to pull it off when the hu is on.

Well, I've got a bit of an update on the problem. I skimmed the owners manual and I could NOT find any reference to the music being paused on startup. Also I have a friend with the EXACT same head unit, I swapped face plates with him to see if that was the problem. It was not, my faceplate worked perfectly on his head unit and his faceplate had the same problems on my head unit. So from that it is something in my head unit itself. Lastly I tried doing a reset of the head unit by pressing and holding the reset button for approximately 10sec, this had no effect on the problem. I am going to call Alpine tomorrow and see what I can find out from them. If it comes down to it I may buy another one on E-bay as they are down to around $150 for one. Conrad

What?!?! A Kenwood with QC issues? I never heard of such a thing. (uh, huh... that's like saying I've never heard of a Rockford Fosbreak amp smoking...) Sounds to me like your HU is pooched. It should still be covered under the Kenwood warranty, seeing as you've only had it 6-8 months. Sounds to me like you'll be shipping it back for a spot of repair...It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

So the symptoms get even weirder. Today I went out to drive my truck and when I started it up, the radio worked perfectly. No matter what I did I could not get it to exhibit any of the symptoms described earlier. About the only difference between today and the previous 4-5 days. Is that it got about 10*F-15*F warmer. It is now around 35*F out. However it was far colder earlier this month (-5*F) and the radio operated just fine, that is with the exception of the LCD being a little slow due to the cold. My only other thought is that either: A) there is a problem in my wiring that is so minute that it is only affecting the radio when it is colder and the wiring moves ever so slightly. Or B) there is some circuit element in the radio that is just now having a problem with the cold. I will try and check the majority of my wiring tomorrow and see what I can find there and update if anything changes. For haemphyst, it is an Alpine not a Kenwood. Also despite the fact that I have only had it 6-8 months, I bought it used on e-bay because this is a 2003 model and I could not find it new. I also talked with Alpine today and if I want to sent it back it will be a $90 flat rate to get it fixed if it is deemed repairable. Conrad