intellistart iv, 99 ford contour

Hello all.  My 1999 Ford Contour with a AG4 alarm and Intellistart 4 is acting up.  The car was doing fine, then all of a sudden, it cratered.  I have a manual transmission so I have to enable the manual transmission mode by pressing Levelshift twice and button3.  Well, the car no longer recognizes the intellistart.  So when I try to enable the manual transmission mode, nothing happens.  I have replaced the IS4 and have found that must not be it.  If I power down the alarm and IS4 then power back up, it works sometimes.  Please help.

Check power supplies, ground and hood switch, have you tied into parking brake? If so make sure that wire only goes to ground when brake lever is pulled up, also check foot brake feed, last but not least reprogramme tach!  Believe it or not, I've had one failure on a Euro GM (Vauxhall) where the handbrake switch had colapsed, also a Renault Clio where they put Lexus style rear lights in and there was a capacitance reading 2 volts nothing much but the unit (Solaris) noticed it!