Dear H-J (and forum gurus), first post so please excuse any etiquette mistakes (also, sorry it's a bit long but I wanted to supply as much info as poss.)

I have a 2007 Passat 2.0 TDI with DSG

I noticed recently (particularly during the cold weather) that if I

left the car for 4 days without use the battery would be almost dead

(certainly not enough charge to successfully turn over the engine !!).

I suspected a parasitic drain, so I went looking for it with my multi-meter and removing the fuses in the engine compartment one at a time. It has the "lower" type box (i.e. the type with the fewer number of fuses) and indeed there seemed to be a ~550mA drain (about right for a flat battery in about 4-days). Unfortunately I was not able to isolate the drain and when I went to restart the car, there was absolutely nothing (although the clock "0:00" and the mileage indicator did light) The doors lock and unlock and the interior light comes on and goes off as expected. But NONE of the instrument indicators light up.

I definitely let the battery disconnect a number of times, not enough

hands :-(

NB Every time I reconnected the battery I got a small spark, is that normal? and the 500mA drain... which sometimes faded after a number of seconds, but always re-surfaced later on

Have I put a fuse back in the wrong slot?

AND/OR

Have I activated some safety/anti-theft feature?

I've tried to find a diagram of the fuse-box without luck (the manual only indicates what a few of the fuses are for). Is there a specific fuse I should be looking for in this instance? (obviously I appreciate that they all need to be correct)

Please help.

Ed62 ("muppet" for not noting fuse positions in the first place)