I've been riding and servicing my own BMW boxers for around 37 years now, starting with a (very gutless!) R60 then working my way through an R90, R75, 650, R90S, and three R1150Rs with an R1150RS in the middle for a bit of variety.

As you've guessed I love beemers, mainly because they're great all round machines with brilliant handling and also relatively easy to service compared to some of their jap cousins for instance.

However as the bikes have become more sophisticated (and me even less) I have had to visit the dealers more often than I'd like, particularly since the onset of the dreaded ECU, as checking and clearing the fault codes is now an essential part of a service.

I've been looking for a way around this for about 10 years and definitely couldn't afford to go down the route of the official BMW kit for this purpose.

Luckily I recently came across the answer - a great new tool from Hexcode that does all I want and a lot more - the GS-911.

I recently took delivery of a review version kindly provided by Hexcode and their UK supplier Ilexa - even more welcome as it coincided with the 12,000 service on my (current!) 1150R :)

This natty gadget simply plugs into the ECU connector and lets you read and reset fault codes, but that's just the start - read on!

Setting up the software - simples!
I've got a Netbook running Windows XP and all that was  needed was a quick browse to the Hexcode website to download and install the latest version of their software which only took a minute or two.