MKIV Jetta electrical issues

Brother called me very frustrated. It was 10:30 PM and his lights wouldn't turn on after making a stop in town to get house building supplies. He is building a house so he doesn't have the time nor much spare money to mess with the car at the moment but is willing to listen.

Wipers were turning on when he turned on the light switch. Blinker lights stayed on solid. No head lamps. Tail and brake lights did work. E-brake messed with things as well. Car started and ran fine.

Searched best I could on google/forums. Thinks seem to point to possibly the ignition switch but the ones stating the issues are gas cars that also are running badly due to the switch. Others have said bad wiring in the column or bad fuzes or grounds back feeding into other systems. I told him to unplug fuzes and plug back in and nothing was happening there. I had him try the light switch. A couple times latter on the light switch it did finally allow the head lights to turn on so he wasn't going to touch anything else as he had the trailer full of house supplies and couldn't leave any where and his other car has a broken door handle as someone attempted to break in to it so now he can't lock it-so he is kind of stuck on cars. Any help would be much appreciated. He also just called and said one head lamp is out on the low beam. He didn't want to try high beam for fear of being stranded again. Don't know if that would cause it. He will be emailing me all the details of what happened so I can post but this is what I heard on the phone so far. I will mail out my stock headlamp switch as I upgraded to fogs to see if that may have caused the problem since plugging back in seemed to get him going.

The headlamp ground connections are under the battery. I'd check those first.

bad ignition switch.

I will forward the information. Thankyou. I also mailed off my headlamp switch to see if it will help. Car is parked for a little while till he gets some time and the house NEEDS to be done first.

Brother tried my headlamp switch-didn't help. He has had some issues with his head light/cruise switch not always working when really cold out till it warms up. Don't know if that is related but he is planning on doing that with the key switch next. Car is still parked-house will be done in a few weeks.

Update.
He installed the cruise control stock since it was working weird anyways and did the ing switch since he was already in the area. Didn't fix it.


FIX:
It was the ground wires under the battery. Two were corroded. Working great now.

And the winner is Post number 2. The first thing to check with electrical issues are the grounds. This is true not just for cars.

The other strange thing-the car was smoking a lot with this. We replaced the cam and it still was (although the cam was starting to wear). Once the grounds were fixed-it stopped smoking and ran as it should. My brother would like to thank everyone on this club for the insight as to what to check. I didn't have time when I was home to help with the electrical parts but I did mention to him the bad grounds-I just don't think he heard me. I reminded him that he was told though.