2001 Corolla Gs Vvti Key Fob Not Working

November 2, 2009

Hello all....I own a 2001 Corolla (1.4) GS VVTi. The key fobs (both) have suddenly stopped working. Neither 'unlock' nor 'lock' buttons are working. When I press any of the two buttons, I see a red light, which is normal (I think; never paid attention before), but nothing happens. I have to unlock and lock the doors manually. Also, when I unlock the driver's side door, none of the other doors get unlocked. I have to press the central lock button on the side of the door to unlock all the doors. Its the same story for locking. The fob Battery is pretty new (changed a month ago) and both the keys seemed to be working alright until now. It happened suddenly. One surprising thing happened: after reaching home I parked the car and locked it manually; and then after a few hours tried the fob and it worked! I tried a few times and it worked every time. However, the next morning, it would not work again! Please help. Going to the dealer and paying them a huge sum to get this sorted is my last resort. Any advise is welcome. Thanks.

November 3, 2009

The keys can 'lose' thier code. Even intermittantly. We used to see it every now and then at our dealership.

The locking ECU probably needs recoding or resetting, a dealer job im afraid.

Who replaced the fob batteries?

November 3, 2009

The keys can 'lose' thier code. Even intermittantly. We used to see it every now and then at our dealership.
The locking ECU probably needs recoding or resetting, a dealer job im afraid.
Who replaced the fob batteries?

Thanks for your reply.

I did...and it was working fine since then; in fact I had to change the batteries on both the fobs (on separate occaasions) and they were both working alright!

November 3, 2009

Seems strange. Maybe the central locking ECU has received a jolt and needs reseating? I remember seeing that happen a few times.

November 4, 2009

Seems strange. Maybe the central locking ECU has received a jolt and needs reseating? I remember seeing that happen a few times.

Hi Guys, thanks for replying. I managed to sort it out! I had read about steps to resync the fob and none of the methods worked. However, this is what I did: I took the key fob close to the sensor (where the red light flashes) and pressed the 'arm' button; and it worked! I then pressed the 'dis-arm' button. It seems to have done the trick. Hope this works for others with the same problem as well. Cheers