please forgive me if this is a newbie question...
The radio/cd player in my 850 was working excellently. Until I left the car with a friend for a couple hours. When I got it back, I tried to turn the radio on, but it didn'twork. It just says "OFF". It's never said "OFF" before. I pushed all the buttons,turned all the knobs. No noise, nothing. My antenna still goes up, but there's no juice in the player. I asked the person about it and they said they had disconnected and reconnected the battery (thinking it would make the check engine light disappear). Could that be the culprit?? Nothing else seems different. If anyone can shed some light on the situation, that would be great. Until then, I'll be singing acapella. Thanks for the help

If you leave the key in position II for more than two hours, it will reset from OFF to CODE. This can be while you are driving, or just sitting in the garage. If you have a CD in the '94, it is a replaced unit and will be a little harder to get code. The radio is easy to pull out to see its serial number though. Did you try flipping through the owners manual and other papers in teh glovebox? Owners very often note the code in there somewhere, particularly if it a replaced unit. Look for four numbers (no letters).
--
Mike Sullivan '07 XC70, '95 855T (100k), '95 855 NA (148k). Past Volvo's: '85 744 (256k), '86 245 (165k), '86 245 (195k), '88 745 (208k), '91 745 (196k), '93 965 (147k) , '98 V70XC (98k).

When you disconnected the battery, power to the radio is interupted and so it goes into the theft mode. You need to key in a 4 digit code to turn the radio back on.

No, I can't tell you the code, it is specific to the radio. If you give a dealer your VIN they can supply the code, presuming your radio has never been replaced. If so, you need the radio serial number.

When the radio says "off" it means the person had tried the wrong code too many times and it makes you wait for like 24 hours to try again. When it says "code" you can put in the right code if you have it.