A6 starting problem

[victor norman]

Had the following problem with my wife's 1999 A6 the other day:

Backed the car out of the garage, replaced the snow tires with summer tires, drove the car back into the garage.

The next day my wife could not start the car. The exact same thing happened with this car a couple of years ago. Advice I received then was to floor the throttle and crank the bejesus out of the car. Then and now the car finally and reluctantly staggered back to life  using this approach. (The battery wasn't up to the task by itself, needed a little help from my Sears battery charger/starter). Had to crank the engine so long I had visions of the starter bursting into flames.

Does anyone know exactly what is going on here? It's not a question of wet plugs - pulled the plugs, they were certainly wet, but replacing them with new plugs did not help. I assume that the engine ECU (?) is somehow objecting to me running the car twice for just a few seconds and preventing a normal start - eg cold start mode turned off? Is there a less abusive way to start the car than the above approach? The car runs just fine other than this.

Thanks

Vic Norman