Engine failsafe Prog. on 523i

Peter C

This notice (Eng Failsafe Prog) came on the dash last week after about three miles driving. Does anyone know what it means? The car still drives, sometimes finding it hard to pick up speed. I have dropped in to a garage who specialises in BMW's. He has not diagnosed the problem yet. He says it may be a job for main dealer, a new ECU and that this will alse have to be progammed by them?
Has anyone encountered this problem?
Its a late 1998 523i with 85K on the clock

Car was serviced just 1.5K ago. There were some errors in the system that had not been cleared in the previous service by another garage but were cleared this time.
Is a new ECU expensive and is this a common fault in the 5 series?

Any help would be appreciated.

528i

It sounds like a MAF meter problem (I've had to replace two of them on a V8 uberpanzer at a cost of over €800 ), It also sounds like your BMW 'specialist' may have fried your ECU by crossing wires or whatever these monkeys do to read fault codes outside of a main dealerships interrogation system.