OynxSTS Posted January 4, 2006 Report Share Posted January 4, 2006 Has anyone out there bought/tried/used one of these "on-line" DVD based manuals... The sales pitch implies that it covers everything in the Helm books plus TSBs, plus Recalls, Plus "service Campaigns", plus complete owners manuals and warranty info! All this for a fraction of the "fair" price for a used Helm Book Are these really from GM? Are they any good? Seems too good to be true... I would have bought one... But I always get nervious when the shipping and handling is way out of wack for the item... Easin' down the highway in a new Cadillac, I had a fine fox in front, I had three more in the back ZZTOP, I'm Bad I'm Nationwide Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan Posted January 4, 2006 Report Share Posted January 4, 2006 Has anyone out there bought/tried/used one of these "on-line" DVD based manuals... The sales pitch implies that it covers everything in the Helm books plus TSBs, plus Recalls, Plus "service Campaigns", plus complete owners manuals and warranty info! All this for a fraction of the "fair" price for a used Helm Book Are these really from GM? Are they any good? Seems too good to be true... I would have bought one... But I always get nervious when the shipping and handling is way out of wack for the item... Original discs are from GM. They are used by dealers. Only on CD ROM that I know of...but had heard the newer ones would be DVD. Typically a 5-6 CD set that you install on your hard drive. About 5-6 G. Covers pretty much all GM 1998- current (depending on which version, new versions released montly) 1998- Current. Complete GM sevice manual, TSB, and recalls. Engine, trans, suspension, electrical, diagrams....basically every thing every model and product line. Pre 1998. TSB and recall info only. Please note! Lots of copies being sold on eBay. The copies often will not load properly. Good sets are hard to find but are very valuable. Logan Diagnostic www.airbagcrash.com www.ledfix.com Logan Diagnostic LLC www.airbagcrash.com www.logandieselusa.com www.ledfix.com www.ledfix.com/yukontaillightrepair.html www.ledfix.com/ledreplacements.html www.ledfix.com/j42385toolrental.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OynxSTS Posted January 4, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 4, 2006 Cool, Thanks Logan, For the price I just might risk it... You can tell me that you told me so after the fact. Easin' down the highway in a new Cadillac, I had a fine fox in front, I had three more in the back ZZTOP, I'm Bad I'm Nationwide Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy2175m4 Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 I bought one of these on DVD for $29.99 free shipping on Ebay, but it would never load or run conrrectly on my computer. The seller soon after disappeared from Ebay. Borderline scam I would say. The disks appeared to be bootleg copies of GM disks. Has anyone out there bought/tried/used one of these "on-line" DVD based manuals... The sales pitch implies that it covers everything in the Helm books plus TSBs, plus Recalls, Plus "service Campaigns", plus complete owners manuals and warranty info! All this for a fraction of the "fair" price for a used Helm Book Are these really from GM? Are they any good? Seems too good to be true... I would have bought one... But I always get nervious when the shipping and handling is way out of wack for the item... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonA Posted January 6, 2006 Report Share Posted January 6, 2006 I bought a "service manual" on CD for a Nissan truck I once owned. I bought the CD on eBay for $20. It was junk. They were, at best, scanned copies of pages, with OCR'd text. It was very corny, and if I only knew, I'd never have bought one. Then, I happened upon a download of a "real" Nissan service manual on CD and it was very nice. All the sections of the service manual were their own PDF file, and they looked exported from the digital copy (not scanned). They were all indexed via a linked table of contents page. It was very professional. Same deal with a digital service manual I have for our Grand Caravan. It's very nice, and is obvious it's not a hijacked scan. There ARE real versions out there, and if you could verify that whatever you are buying is genuine GM, I wouldn't hesitate to try it out. Jason(2001 STS, White Diamond) "When you turn your car on...does it return the favor?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KHE Posted January 6, 2006 Report Share Posted January 6, 2006 I bought a service manual on CD for my ski-doo snowmobile last year from a seller on ebay. Prior to bidding, I asked the seller to send me sample pages from the manual so I could verify the clarity and to make sure they weren't just scans of a paper manual. It was as Jason described - all PDF files that were searchable. I was very pleased with it - it had the shop manual, parts catalog, labor guide, and racing supplement. I would be leary of the GM manuals on DVD though... Kevin '93 Fleetwood Brougham '05 Deville '04 Deville 2013 Silverado Z71 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
canadian95sts Posted January 6, 2006 Report Share Posted January 6, 2006 When you are looking at buying an item such as this, you really need to look at EXACTLY what you are buying. These E-Bay sellers are sometimes tricky. The Original GM manuals come in a 6 disc set. If you are looking at buying one on a DVD, its is going to be a burned copy of the 6 disc set, condensed onto only one DVD. (DVD'S hold more information than a regular CD) Also burned copies will likley have a poorly made lable stuck to the DVD or CD's, where the GM CD'S will look be screen printed, like most other store bought CD's. In my opinion, if you are looking at purchasing something like this, and if you cant get an original copy of the discs, i would purchase at least copies of the six individual discs, which i believe have a better track record ran the condensed version on one DVD. Matt A good friend will come and bail you out of jail...BUT, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "darn...that was fun!" www.madd.ca Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OynxSTS Posted February 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2006 Well it took FOREVER (my fault) but today I finally got my GM Service and parts Operations CD/DVD (eSi) from that on-line auction house... Took two installs to actually get it to work... (which generated that dreaded sinking feeling) But it works, its real and WOW this is very cool. The structure and layout of the screens are a little odd, but once you get used to it... it looks to be complete... As in, if it was in the Helm, it's in here. .. One thing that is cool is that all of the "related" fixes are hot linked... So.. For example... If your going to replace your crank sensors.. (which BTW GM admits on this DVD are a bit of an issue to the point where the new manufacture can't keep up with the demand...hmmm...) It hot links to the section on removing the lower deflector and then to the section on removing the oil adapter...etc...EXCELLENT no more flipping pages! Very slick and very cool. Highly recommended! Easin' down the highway in a new Cadillac, I had a fine fox in front, I had three more in the back ZZTOP, I'm Bad I'm Nationwide Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan Posted February 21, 2006 Report Share Posted February 21, 2006 We threw $20 at a eBay DVD....did not work on Windows XP. Pretty hard to fit 6-7g of GM data onto a 'copied' 4g DVD+R. Our 2$ worth.. Logan Diagnostic LLC www.airbagcrash.com www.logandieselusa.com www.ledfix.com www.ledfix.com/yukontaillightrepair.html www.ledfix.com/ledreplacements.html www.ledfix.com/j42385toolrental.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OynxSTS Posted February 21, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 21, 2006 Pretty hard to fit 6-7g of GM data onto a 'copied' 4g DVD+R. Correct.. It comes on two disks a DVD and a CD... And it looks like a "home made" "compressed" copy of the 6-8 CDs.. Installation was not "easy" and took over 50 minutes to copy all of that data to my hard-drive... When I installed it on my machine (and it did take two tries... and no fewer than three reboots) it expanded to a total of 5.89 GB... and created a GM SPO directory a eSI directory and three under that (Apache Group, SIROM and a Transbase.) Logan is right this is a total roll of the dice... Guess I got lucky... Easin' down the highway in a new Cadillac, I had a fine fox in front, I had three more in the back ZZTOP, I'm Bad I'm Nationwide Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rickster Posted February 23, 2006 Report Share Posted February 23, 2006 Rob N has informed me that he has these disks for me to load onto my computer. Cool. Hope it works. We gotta met for a beer one of these days. Rick 2001 STS Mettalic Otter Grey, Black Leather, 213,000 kilometers - miles - ? Still running strong! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rickster Posted February 28, 2006 Report Share Posted February 28, 2006 Just loaded the disks on the computer. First try by the way. I actually followed the instuctions. Seems to be working just fine. Now we have to go for a beer. Do you want the disks back? Thanks again. Rick 2001 STS Mettalic Otter Grey, Black Leather, 213,000 kilometers - miles - ? Still running strong! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OynxSTS Posted February 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2006 Just loaded the disks on the computer. First try by the way. I actually followed the instuctions. Seems to be working just fine. Now we have to go for a beer. Do you want the disks back? Thanks again. Rick I don't know what you are talking about! Coping these disks is probably illegal and punishable by quail hunting with the Veep. If you got a set, you didn't get them from me! Since we have no idea where they came from I'd keep them if I were you Easin' down the highway in a new Cadillac, I had a fine fox in front, I had three more in the back ZZTOP, I'm Bad I'm Nationwide Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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