Every time I have used VCDS some thing has gone wrong.
I know it's not the VCDS, it's me, I am useless with things like that, I can't even use a mobile phone.
Anyway, The reason that the dates were showing up as old faults was because my MMI clock had disappeared long ago and was showing on the speedo dash as Date year 2010.
Because the clock was missing on the MMI I was unable to reset the date.
I found out how to get the MMI clock back using the hidden green screen, so all is ok now.