Vagcom from ebay

[Alexiskayak_7]

Does vagcom (obd cable and cd) from ebay working properly, or they are crap?
Also, i ordered a 2+2 to obd cable for diagnosing my g. Will i have any issues loging with the usb/obd cable the digifant ecu?

[cheys03]

Mine worked for a while then died. New one can't even make a connection. I'd say avoid.

[Alexiskayak_7]

Mine worked for a while then died. New one can't even make a connection. I'd say avoid.

The software or the cable was wrong?

[cheys03]

Cable itself. VWTool was the most useful software when it did work. Even with the first cable it was tempermental. The first cable burnt out and died. After receiving the second cable and not being able to connect to my ECU again I tried a second ECU and then a friend's car and second laptop. Nothing worked with the included software, torrented software or VWTool though to cable itself seemed to at least part-work because Windows would detect the USB device and the LED would flicker on it when attempting comms to the ECU. My friend then used another ECU diagnostics device on my ECU (a code reader) which worked fine. I believe Hayesey uses a serial cable rather than USB and has more sucess, though for what information it can actually give even when it does work, it's not really worth the cost or hassel. As Hayesey says somewhere in another post - the best diagnostic tool for the engine management on these cars is a multimeter. I second  that advice.

[Alexiskayak_7]

Thank you cheys for the advice!
I downloaded and extracted vwtool, but when i'm installing it a window pops that says: 'COMMDLG.DLL could not be installed'?
Does anyone has any idea what i'm doing wrong?

[cheys03]

Sorry, haven't come across this error. Did you extract to the default location C:\VWTOOL ?

[Alexiskayak_7]

Yes i did! Is there a possibility that vwtool doesn't work with vista? What windows do you have cheys?

[g40chris]

mine wouldnt work from ebay
it wouldnt find the usb port apparently

[cheys03]

I'm running XP on both the laptops I tried. It's probably a Vista thing as you suggest as that DLL will have to be extracted and registered to the OS. On my system it was extracted to C:\Windows\system and C:\Windows\system32. Registry value HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Control\WOW\KnownDLLs lists it as does ControlSet002,003 and CurrentControlSet.

Hope this helps match the install to your system

[hayesey]

people seem to have more trouble with the USB leads than the serial cables, which is why I bought a serial one.  However, most modern laptops wont have a serial port any more. 

Apparently there is some tool you can install in windows that allows you to fiddle with the USB-serial emulation settings and apparently if you play about with them the USB lead is more likely to work with old stuff like a g40.  I don't know the details, you'll have to google it.

Yeah I use VWTOOL.exe on my polo and it works ok.  Vagcom works for me on newer cars (such as my passat) but I've never got vagcom working too well with my g40.

[Alexiskayak_7]

VW Tool, has installed properly in windows xp i've tested...
One more question: If i buy a rs232 to obd cable and a vagcom softaware, is it going to be capable logging in newer cars that the vagcom software has?

[hayesey]

how new?  don't think it'll work with anything that has CAN-BUS, you'll probably need the proper vagcom leads for that.  Prob work on most things up to about 2000 though.

[Alexiskayak_7]

Not so much new... I want to scan audi a3 8l/vw golf mk4 and vw polo 6n,6n2 and 9n... I think that it will be capable of diagnosing?

[hayesey]

not sure about a 9n polo but I'd have thought the others would be ok if the lead is for vagcom version 409.  Just check the ross-tech website, it says what cars the various versions work with.

[Alexiskayak_7]

Ok! Thank you very much guys...