You never know how much you use your car radio until it's gone, or in the case of this reader, out of commission:

My daughter had the battery changed on her 2004 Honda Civic and now the radio won't come on. Also, her anti theft light is on. What should we do to correct these? Thank you for any help. - Lynn

When you disconnect your car's battery, some cars, especially older cars, reset the electronics in the car when you restore power. For your car's OBD system, this means that it has to start taking readings again from scratch to get things back to where they need to be. Your car radio is another story. It resets and locks itself so that a thief can't use it if he steals it. Word gets out and all of a sudden nobody is stealing Honda car stereos, at least in theory. This is all great unless you're the one with the non-working radio.

To get the radio to come back on, you'll need to type a code into the unit. Some cars came with anti theft code information in their original literature. If you're lucky, you've got it in your files and can get things going again. If not, you'll have to pay a visit to the dealer. Some dealers can look up your code according to your VIN, but sometimes they actually have to remove the radio to cross reference the code. If that's the case, it might be a good time to upgrade your car stereo.

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