Dodgy looking car manuals on DVD

The DVDs were probably downloaded and burnt from a torrent, and are likely packed full of trojans and other crap. As you rightly notice, you're asking for it if you follow the instructions...

As for the feedback, lets face it, anyone daft enough to follow those instructions is pretty unlikely to know if their system has been compromised ...

That few?

Merc-WIS by chance?

I bought a set a few months back, and they installed fine, without any undesirable additions.

The reason for disabling the anti-virus, is that the installer programme is quite fussy about what processes are running on the computer during installation, so you got to run a programme that stops all unwanted programmes, plus the anti-virus can slow down the entire installation as it checks every file.

The firewall has to be disabled, as part of the installation needs to set-up a dummy network connection, and if the firewall is running, it can interfere with it.

Once WIS is installed, the anti-virus and firewalls can be reactivated.

If you watch the CD with the instruction CD, it guides you through the entire process. Only problem is it only covers vehicles upto 2000 IIRC, after which Merc switched to an online information service.

Yes.

Thanks Moray, I've passed this on to him. He seemed reassured enough to give it a try. Not sure that I would have done so myself, mind.

I did occur to me that the discs were actually hacking into an online service, but I guess not then.

Not that I've found. I installed it on my laptop with the wireless card pulled out just to make sure though, and everything has been fine since.

It's just a copy of the genuine Merc WIS, but supplied along with a code generator to activate it.

As a systems admin I can happily say that 96% of people have varying degrees of computer illiteracy, 2% known enough to be dangerous and the other 2% must live in perpetual darkness at home ;)

I'm sure every profession feels the same about their user base.

Regards,

Tim