VCDS: is it my car, or the dongle?

(Sorry about the huge images...)


Is this a problem with my car, or the dongle?


When doing the port test I get this:






The auto scan sometimes works fine, and sometimes I get this:








How can any modern car *not* be ODB-II compatible? This is using VCDS's "ODB-II functions",

I had to upgrade dongle for my 2019 Tiguan. It wouldn’t work on anything after 2015.


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I’m sorry. It’s 2019 and newer. You have to upgrade to the new dongle.


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What is your computers’ specs? I’ve run into that issue when trying to run VCDS through a VM.

Nonetheless, I think you’ll receive better answers on the VCDS’ website/forum.

Toyomike said:

I’m sorry. It’s 2019 and newer. You have to upgrade to the new dongle.

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When I tried it on my wife's Alltrack I got a very clear "nope, you need a new dongle" error message, but I've never seen anything like that on my '15. (and it does work most of the time)

JM Popaleetus said:

What is your computers’ specs? I’ve run into that issue when trying to run VCDS through a VM.

Click to expand...

Boo. I'm running a Win 7 VM in VMWare Fusion on a Mac.


It worked just fine with my old car ('04 Jetta) and in the past it has worked well within "good enough" on this car.

Nonetheless, I think you’ll receive better answers on the VCDS’ website/forum.

Click to expand...

Yea, I looked there first, but for some reason my account isn't "verified" (anymore? yet?) so I can't post in the "VCDS problems" subforum.

milktree said:

Boo. I'm running a Win 7 VM in VMWare Fusion on a Mac.

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That’s your issue. The USB emulation/pass-through isn’t 1:1 enough (for a lack of better words) for VCDS with the high speed CAN bus.

Out of a hundred tries on a VM, I got it to work once in a VM with my 2015. I ended up buying an old ThinkPad off Craigslist just for VCDS and VIDA/DICE (Volvo).

milktree said:

When I tried it on my wife's Alltrack I got a very clear "nope, you need a new dongle" error message, but I've never seen anything like that on my '15. (and it does work most of the time)

Click to expand...

I have the what think is the unlimited VIN "microcan" cable and used it countless times on our Alltrack (even with our 2005 XP machine).

milktree said:

Boo. I'm running a Win 7 VM in VMWare Fusion on a Mac.


It worked just fine with my old car ('04 Jetta) and in the past it has worked well within "good enough" on this car.





Yea, I looked there first, but for some reason my account isn't "verified" (anymore? yet?) so I can't post in the "VCDS problems" subforum.

Click to expand...

I've heard bootcamp is the way to go or windows on a Mac and VCDS, but I'm not willing to corrupt my MBP with such vial trash. If I need to find a new machine craigslist will be where it's at.

For those playing along on the home game:


I used a laptop running Windoze natively, and everything seems to work perfectly.

This pisses me off because I really hate Winwodz, running a VM is way easier for me ... when VCDS works.


The extra annoying thing is that it *used* to work just fine in a VM on my Mac. Maybe something in V 20 of VCDS is more demanding than previous versions.

I have no problem (never have) running VCDS on my various Macs.

Workhorse in the past was a 2015 MacBook Pro (currently on new MBP which introduces a USB-A-->USB-C adapter - again, no problem), but I've passed around the same VMware Fusion Win7 and Win10 VMs to my 2013 11" MacBook Air and it runs there fine as well.

Had no idea this was even an issue.
(Edit: ...possibly because I'm use HexNet VCDS hardware (?). I don't know - just conjecture.)

HEXNET has a full SoC and is designed to run standalone; probably why it isn’t sensitive to USB polling.