Having recently upgraded both my desktop and laptop computers to windows 10 it became necessary to reinstall my various Ford Service Information DVD’s. My previous installation involved a mash-up of mapping drive letters on my NAS and assorted other voodoo to get it to work without the disk in the drive.

Poking around on line there were several procedures that involved creating ISO images, running the program in virtual machines and other twisted procedures.
After a bit of fiddling around I was able to come up with a beautifully simple procedure that lets you run the Service Information data directly from your hard drive.

Let’s take my F150 DVD as an example:

Put the DVD in the drive and run the installation normally. This will create a default folder on your C: drive named TSO and install a batch of files in it. Now, with the disk still in the drive, run the program. This step is important as it creates a couple of files unique to your installation. You can now exit the program. With the DVD still in the drive, open Windows Explorer, navigate to your C: drive and create an empty folder named F150. While still in Windows Explorer copy the entire contents of the DVD to the folder you just created. Remove the DVD from the drive.

Now, while still in Windows Explorer navigate to your C: drive and go to the folder named TSO that the installation program created. Click on that folder. You’ll see a file called tsobrowser.ini. Left click to highlight the file and then Right click and select “Edit” from the popup menu. The 4th line down in the file will look something like this:

17SH2=1~3~X:\home.htm~2017 F-150~November 2016

The actual value at X: will be the drive letter of YOUR DVD drive that the program was installed from.

Change the X: to C:\F150. Save the file and close all windows.

The program will now run entirely from your hard drive. Simply and quickly.

If you have Service Information DVD’s for other Ford vehicles (in my case, my wife’s Escape) Run the install program as above but at the start of the install don’t accept the default installation location of c:\TSO instead change it to c:\TSO2. Install, run, create the appropriate folder, copy the DVD, edit the tsobrowser.ini file in that folder and done!

Now just a couple of words on the wiring diagram part of the DVD. In every case the provided svgviewer file on the DVD failed to work for me. All wiring diagram pages sat showing “loading”. Ford uses a file format called SVG for their wiring diagrams. Adobe used to provide an SVG viewer up until 2009 when they discontinued it stating that all modern web browsers can display SVG files. Of course Ford uses a proprietary browser (tsobrowser). The ancient version (vintage 2003) of svgviewer provided on the DVD doesn’t play well with Win7 or Win10. You can download a version here:

http://www.fordservicecontent.com/fo...s/svgview*****

Note that the forum software will not allow me to post a link containing an executable file. Substitute the **** above with dot (.) exe.

Download the file and install it and your wiring diagrams will display just fine.

The procedure is a lot easier that it sounds. I really don’t understand Ford’s rationale for creating a system that requires the disk to be in the drive. I can copy the original disk as many times as I want and every copy will install and run from the disk. They’re also using support software that’s over a decade obsolete. I know that the disks that we purchase from Helm are different from the ones their dealers use. Those have expiration dates after which they will no longer work but if you happen upon one of those on Ebay there are numerous hacks on line about how to get around the expiration date.

Enjoy!

 

Nice workaround. I agree it is annoying to have to swap disks in for this kind of thing.

 

It's done to prevent copyright infringement.

 

Yeah, totally understand. Still a pain.

 

Say @PupnDuck
just received my 2014 Helm CD.
followed your suggestions and installed the SVG viewer…
Many thanks for the link.
having a bit of a problem redirecting tsobrowser to use C:\F150 …
my tsobrowser dot ini file 4th line has….and is working with…..

14SE2=1~3~F:~stock\home.html~2014 F150~January 2014

i have changed the F for the cd drive to C:\F150 with little success.
tried several different combinations including
14SE2=1~3~C:\F150\stock\home.html…..
still no joy

any other hints?

 

I want to give many thanks to @PupnDuck for this nice write up.
Now it took me no less then 6 tries between 3 computers to finally understand what you were telling me on this post. (north of 65)
I miss read the run the program as install the program vs launch it from the desktop.
Thanks again for the post.
Newbie 5