Does anyone have experience w/ the Ross-Tech VAG-COM software? I want to buy it but they say that you can only install it on one PC. My concern is this: I constantly reformat my computer and upgrade it, and quite frankly I'll be damned if a software that I bought the license to is restricting me from re-installing it... Does anyone know how they restrict you? I have imaging software that makes copies of either a whole partition or specified software installed on the computer including registry entries, I wonder if that would work. I really hope that they give me some good news because I can be a very spitful computer geek...

 

I use a stand alone hard drive for all that stuff ( it asks you which drive you want to install it to ) so you wont lose anything when formatting your main hard drive and you can plug it into a laptop to access the software

 

I contacted Ross-Tech directly and they said that their new system has built in authentication and that I may install it and reinstall it on as many PC's as I wish. Thats fantastic! I think I'm going to buy it.

 

you wont be disappointed

 

My guess is they verify your license using your MAC address, since it's the only identifiable, unique component of the computer. That being said, you should be able to re-install on the same box as much as you want...unless your network card dies.

Also, the easiest way to fool the licensing mechanism is to install the software on a virtual machine in something like VMWare or Parallels (mac). This way, regardless of how many times you format your hard drive, as long as you retain the VM, you'll always have a licensed and installed copy of the software. This is also applies to the Bentley manual since it too has some lame licensing crap.

Just my .02

edit Oh, and I forgot to mention, I second what techbod said, the ross-tech software rocks.

 

if it is the MAC of the NIC then that is super easy to get by as you can spoof it quite simply... More over they say I can put it on as many different computers as I want since the newest version uses a different anti-piracy (evidently). The thing is I don't know what a "fully featured" version will give me over the free-bee version. Is it something that is actually useful? I think I may inquire Ross-Tech again, unless someone knows the differences?

 

It's not done on the MAC. The cable itself stores the license on it. I have 3 Laptops with Vag software on it and they all work just fine, obviously I have to use them one at a time. You can download and install the software wherever you want, the only catch is it will only automatically license with a genuine Ross-Tech cable.

 

wow that is sneaky... some sort of "dongle" on the cable to authenticate against. They do give you the option to just purchase a license and use a 3rd party cable however while their cable is 50 dollars and ebay has cables for 15 dollars I figure that it may be harder to use the software as freely versus having the genuine one. I think I'm going to go the ebay route first and if I don't get what I want I suppose I'll just bite the bullet and spend the money...

I do need a factory repair manual too, and bently sells them for 70-90 dollars; so overpriced. If I have to spend some coin on this too, I'm going to find a way to do bad things... I cannot believe that I can't find it anywhere in the interweb cracked...

 

Yah, Bentley isn't cheap. Unless you can find one used, you're better off just spending the money and getting one new off of ebay. I got mine a while back for something like $60. Wait for a low-priced auction to pop up, they do occasionally.

And for the VAG-COM, just buy a cheap a$$ cable from ebay, use the freeware version of ross-tech's software, it'll do just fine. I'm not sure what all you want to do, but the ability to read/clear codes is included in the shareware version and is the most important part.

 

Couldn't you just make an ISO image on a jump drive and carry it everywhere?