Driver Seat Won't Recline - I'm not sure it's the Seat Twist Issue

[Stankdaddy]

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My wife wanted to take the car to the car wash and she hit the seat memory. Evidently something happened to the memorized position because the seat raised all the way up and reclined all the way back. The problem is that the recline/decline button seems to not respond. All the other functions work on the seat and there is no twist action. The motor works because it did recline the seat all the way down. Does anyone have any idea about how to rectify this? I thought it was the seat switch, but I tested it using a known good switch and it doesn't work either. Any ideas? Besides telling my wife to stay in her own 5 series and leave mine alone, LOL.

[builtinbetter]

In my e60 m5 each key fob memorizes a different set of settings for seat, steering wheel, radio and climate control i believe. Anyway, i accidently grabbed the second key that I've never used before and everything was totally different than how I normally have it...i thought electrical grimlins had arrived until i figured out the key thing.
Is it possible that the e39 does this also and she grabbed a rarely used fob with weird settings?

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[Stankdaddy]

No, I have only one FOB. The I normally use setting 1 and she uses 2. In this case, somehow the memorized settings got screwed up. Both 1 and 2 were both in the completely reclined position. Normally we just hit the number the seats go to their rightful positions. This was the only way to adjust recline of the seat since I couldn't change it using the switch. Now I have no saved setting to go back to and the switch doesn't work. LOL, screwed I guess...

[Mike WW]

I've been in under the seat before but I can't quite picture it. But they are just regular motors and I think they have a plug on them. While not a fix, to make it driveable you could always jumper out a motor at a time to position it where you want it. A bit on the crude side and beware unplugging things and setting off an airbag code, but it would work. I believe there is a seat control module, meaning micro computer, which sounds like the likely culprit. I'm not sure on it's details, just that I think it's there and the problem.