Advice needed for MFD / 12V battery issue

Hi all,

I would appreciate any help or guidance on this. I have a 2004 Prius whose MFD is showing all of the signs of the EL002-05 TSB. I've tried to read through all the posts about this but it also does the following:

- Often the audio will just power off on its own. Waiting anywhere between 1 and 10 seconds, I can press the PWR button on the dash (not on the MFD) and it will come right back on to the same station or CD. Many times when I power it back on, if the audio display happened to be on the MFD, it will show Audio Off. If a dynamic screen (such as either of the info screens) is up when the power goes out, whatever screen was up on the MFD freezes and only shows the overlay (for example, the 5 minute bars disappear and don't reappear but I can see the rest of the screen around where the bars usually go).

- The audio (doesn't matter if AM/FM/CD/Cassette) will stop for less than half a second, play for about a second, cut out again, play again and do this a few times. This happens not only when driving but also when stopped or parked with the engine on.

Possibly unrelated: My wife was on a 3 hour drive after leaving the car in an airport parking lot for 2 weeks. At a stop approximately 2 hours in, she turned off the engine, locked the car. She returned to find the engine wouldn't start and every error light on the dash would turn on when she would try to start the car. This was fixed by a jump. I have checked the 12V battery via the maintenance mode and it seems to be within normal ranges posted here.

Two weeks previous to that, I had gotten the full error lights on the dash when starting the car. I found by starting the car in steps (push Power button once, wait for accessories, push Power button a second time, wait for more accessories, press brake and press Power button a third time) these messages went away and everything was fine. I had it into the dealer after that and they didn't find anything wrong.

The problem is worsening and becoming more frequent.

So any thoughts on what I should tackle first? I'm not an electrician so I'd probably have to take the MFD out someplace to do Hobbit's fix. But I'm willing (or aka desperately short of money) to dig in and check the connections myself. But could all this be caused by an old/dying 12V battery?

I'd appreciate any advice.

Cheers