It happened this morning for my other half. She was going around the roundabout and the steering went heavy and the warning lights came on with a check the steering message. She pulled over and stopped the car, left for a few minutes and restarted all ok.... Having done the forum search, she did have the lights on and when she restarted she turned the off. So first stop will be to get a new battery or at least checked - i cleaned it up last year as the terminals were furred up.

Is the 100hp susceptible to the power steering issues like the punto?

It's electrically assisted. Needs sufficient power. If you don't know when the battery was last changed, don't go to the bother of testing it. Just go and get a new one of a decent brand such as Bosch.

:yeahthat:

Battery is always the answer on here

So I took off the battery and went to the battery place- where they checked it and everything was Ok. He said that, he wouldn't replace it.. Anyway I stuck it on my charger when back and it was ok. So I will continue until I get the problem whilst waiting for a good deal for a new battery.

So it happened again with me this time. So the car was stopped at the traffic lights - only the radio on. Then a beep and the warning of hill holder failure/ESP failure and power steering failure. I set off when the lights were green and drove for a couple of minutes without power assistance (not so bad) stoppped and restarted the car. Everything OK. So is this battery - BOSCH 0 092 S40 020 ok? My car runs also LPG so I would like more power.

It's possible, as already written it's because the battery is getting on a bit.
Electric power steering is very power hungry and it's failry common the steering motor starts acting up if it doesn't get enough juice.

On the other hand, it's not unheard of for the steering motor, it's ECU or even the steering torque sensor to start failing with these.

Best bet is to try a new battery and make sure the alternator is outputting enough juice before condeming the steering motor.
With the motor running at around 2500rpm, around 14.4v acrross the battery terminals is a reasonable good output.

If that checks out and a new battery doesn't help, there are places that will diagnose and repair electric steering units for a fraction of the cost of a new one.