after about 2 months of banging my head against a brick wall   I can now say I cracked it lol

a genuine vcds cable will work with this program on windows 7 and 8, but to do so you must use this driver from ross-tech

 

http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/usb/virtual-com-port.html

 

once I had set it up correctly, it took less than 5 minutes.. and I pretty much followed this guide

 

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/167892-auto-closeopen-windows-tutorial/

Ive been lucky not to need to download any drivers for either program so found it very easy.