Hi. New-ish here.
2003 VW Jetta Wagon TDI 5-speed. Had a coolant migration issue that caused a short in a connector that fried my glow plug indicator light. Melted my cluster just a little. Replaced the connector. Now trying to swap in a new to me cluster.

Originally had pulled my car's PIN using immnuts directions with vag commander. Worked great. Set new keys with the PIN last February.

Plugged in the new cluster and pulled the dash eeprom. Saved as .bin file. then got greedy with Vag commander and tried to reset the miles to my old cluster. Didn't seem to take, subsequent reads won't get past a couple of blocks unless I set to ignore empty. It then is giving me a 5 digit PIN when it should be 4. I tried the pin in VCDS and it doesn't say it works or doesn't work, but when going in to adaptation mode I try to set the new cluster to the original PIN and then test it responds with an error.

Fired up vag eeprom and it starts to read and then stops and tells me that the eeprom area blocked can't read it. Also times out when searching for ECU.

Using VCDS I ran through all the tests on the new cluster and everything works as it should. It also correctly shows the old VIN and old immobilizer ID.

Car will start but die right off.

I am trying to slow and down and come up with a more rigorous plan moving forward. Original cluster still works, just makes me nervous as the circuit board is fried at the glow plug indicator light and doesn't feel safe to use.

Is there a way to save everything from the original cluster and flash the new cluster with this saved data?
Or is there a way to to fix the eeprom area blocked problem?