First, a big thanks to DERBO, MIKEYDAWG, ITSGARY, etc.
Finally got this thing to work. Am doing a quick write-up for folks to share my experience:
1) First, there are multiple ISTA+ files floating out there, BMWStandard Tools, etc. Most are legit I think, but there's so many other windows registry tweaks and .NET installs that one needs to potentially do that it can be frustrating, as often times "install instructions" you find on the web don't necessarily match the nuances of the files you've downloaded.
I initially downloaded from the links on the Bimmergeeks.net website, but while I got the ISTA+ to install correctly (downrev though), the BMW Standard Tools install was a bit f*'d up and in the end, was not able to get my K+DCAN to connect properly.
2) So I went and installed the files from here:
https://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/sh....php?t=1023698
Came with a complete Rheingold install kit, .NET executables, registry change scripts, etc. It also came with the EDIABAS and standard tools
3) Download was fairly straight forward from the Megaupload link. There's a 4GB cap on downloads, so you'll find yourself having to wait a few hrs to continue the download or to pay to remove the cap limit. One trick I found was that if you have access to a corporate vpn, you can try downloading first and when you hit the limit, log-onto your corporate vpn and restart the download. This tricks the service on the IP address.
4) Once downloaded, just follow the instructions....a bunch of executables and scripts that you need to do. Where I got hung up though was that it requires a Windows .NET 3.5 to be installed, and my corporate laptop has a policy restriction that just didn't let this go through (even despite trying some online tricks to remove the restriction in the registry).
5) So Plan B was to install this on an older personal laptop that I had, which was fairly straight forward, however, it had a smaller hard drive, so definitely need to free up at least 50 GB of hard drive space to handle the install.
6) As for the cable, I picked up the Bimmergeek's cable. To be honest, wasn't necessarily impressed with the cable (i.e., in that it's a premium over the other cables you can buy off Amazon). In the end, everyone is buying from the same ODM reference design from a few factories in China. There's a toggle button on the Bimmergeek cable that switches left/right (supposedly you flip this for older E-model cars). That button on my was already flopping about in the housing, still attached to the PCB but probably will get loose at some point. In any event, I found that for the E9x models, you don't need to touch this toggle and just leave it in the "right" position.
7) Final step was to fire up the ISTA+ and then try to get the car to communicate to it. This is where it got a bit confusing. The BMW tools install creates a EDIABAS folder in the C:\. Instructions there are to make sure your cable COM # (e.g., 1) matches the setting in the OBD.INI file. Then to make sure your EDIABAS.INI file inteface is set to STD:OBD. I made both these changes and when I tried to connect to ISTA+, I was still getting the connection host error.
Turns out, there is another EDIABAS folder that was created under the \Rheingold install folder. There was no OBD.INI file in this folder, but there was another EDIABAS.INI file. Changed the setting to STD:OBD and low and behold everything worked. Funny though even though there were detailed instructions on everything, this last step was failed to be mentioned.
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Anyways, now that ISTA+ is working, went ahead and registered my recent battery change. The ISTA interface is a bit kludgey and many drill-down menus that require "Continue" confirmation, but one thing I've noticed is that Error Code scanning is very quick, like 5 sec. max vs. the typical 1 min+ that you would see on a Carly scanner or even Foxwell scanner.
Definitely in the end, am very happy I went through this process, albeit frustrating at times.