So I bought a vag-com cable on ebay in hopes that it would severely decrease the cost of using the software, but every time I try to do a diagnostic on the car, it tells me my copy is unregistered and needs to be activated. I was under the impression that all I needed was the cable and the free software to do diagnostics. I mean, if I absolutely have to swallow the 100 dollar price tag, I will, but I am spending challenged.

 

you can only do certain diagnostics with the vag com like resetting fault codes, reading some of the measuring blocks, and convenience features. it's a free version so it's limited to how much of the software you can actually use.

 

as i remembered, ther are versions floating around with name and pass for registering...ask around..

 

Man, that would be great, but to be honest, I wouldn't even know where to start or who to ask.

 

try ebay..i found mine there

 

The cable that I have is a no name brand, and when I hooked up to Vag-Com via the 409.1 software with usb driver software via the seller of the cable, the program found the cable no problem. The issue I am having is when I start a car diagnostic, I get an error saying that my copy of Vag-Com software needs to be registered/activated. What can I do with the unregistered copy of the software vs spending the 100 dollars to register it?

 

When I downloaded the 409.1 from Ross Tech, I didn't have to register it. And it worked fine (limited stuff you can do as mentioned above).

 

Not trying to hi-jack the thread but I am trying to get Vag-com to work as well (409.1) and I have tried installing it and running it on XP and it doesn't do anything at all. I've tried installing it on Windows 7 and running it in compatibility mode for XP but it just doesn't work. Nothing happens when I double click the icon on my desktop. I've tried double-clicking the Vag-com.exe file itself and still nothing happens, no GUI, no nothing.

Any idea what the issue is? I have tried turning off my anti-virus but it doesn't make a difference; the program won't run. This is the legitimate executable from the ross-tech website. Just doesn't work.

Help!

 

Try installing the program in compatibility mode. If you are running it on a Boot Camp partition on a mac, then it won't work at all, because it doesn't recognize a unix based environment.