I'm on my second Forester  the first one had a really neat hillstart gizmo ... Is this standard on first series 1998 -2000 + or was it an optional extra.? My current Forester, same year, same spec, a couple of months difference  I have had it since 2017.    doesn seem to have it and as I'm getting past doing mech stuff myself, I just had a new clutch,  valves done,  some oil seals (Except the one in my previous recent posts) and said to my Mr. spannerman, who had the gearbox out and generally everything necessary for the work I wanted done , 'while you are under there can you reconnect or at least suss out the auto hill start feature. '    when I bought this one in 2016 the owner said he'd had the system de activated , why for Cries sake it was one of the things I loved most on the first one.  So , whaddya think ... is it down there somewhere , maybe it wasnt fitted to my one but my owners manual talks about it.... all feed back gratefully fed back... Jonboy

You deactivate it by disconnecting a cable that goes from clutch pedal to a rocker arm on a inline valve mounted between brake circuit steel pipes .

I can do a picture from RH SF forester showing the valve as should still be same position in engine bay .

If the cable still there with threaded end you just need nut and spacers reconnect it then reset it by tightening or loosening the nuts (2 nuts as jam nut setup) so brakes release at right point of clutch travel bite point .

I do have oem nuts and spacer if was needed .