Can't playback DVD's Help Please

wackojackouk

Hi ppl

Hope you can help or point me in the right direction.

My father-in-law cannot play DVD's on his Dell PC - (1.8Ghz XP Home, 512RAM) even though he has PowerDVD and Windows Media Player 10 installed.

When he puts in a DVD and chooses WMP or PowerDVD it opens the program as you would expect but then he get's an error saying it had encountered problems and you have to close it down.

First of all I thought it was a WMP 9 problem so I installed WMP10 but this had the same effect. I then tried it through PowerDVD and it said the same thing so my thinking is that it's a Windows problem not the software.

If he puts a normal audio CD in the drive it works fine. He has both a normal DVD drive and also a DVD Writer and it says the same thing when I've tried it on both.

Just a note - it used to work ages ago on his original windows installation but the HDD crashed so he got a new one and installed Windows XP Home on a Dell OEM CD that we obtained.

Can anyone give me any advice on what the problem may be?

Thanks

WJUK

clayts

A missing codec most probably - try the basic K Lite package or better still the basic Media Player 6.4 which includes DVD playback.

Neither WMP 9 or 10 have DVD playback included as standard.

robnye

i think this is something to do with the settings for the dvd player.

are all of his dvd's the same region... ie region 2 (europe)
i had a similar problem, and after a few uses the dvd player locks to a set region, i now run a little piece of software that fools the dvd player to think all the dvds are of the same region

jampton

clayts wrote:

A missing codec most probably - try the basic K Lite package or better still the basic Media Player 6.4 which includes DVD playback.

Neither WMP 9 or 10 have DVD playback included as standard.

Unlikely to be codecs as the original post mentions Power Dvd aswell
as WMP as not being able to play - as the name suggests Power Dvd installations include Dvd playback.

Are the discs commercially produced or made at home ?

fatblokexl

i had a problem with powerdvd too. i down loaded all sorts of stuff to get it to work but to no avail.
someone gave me nero suite and i've had no problems since. probably coincidence.
as mentioned in earlier post, dvd drives do have a habit of "locking" onto a certain region and making other regions unplayable.

wackojackouk

Hi guys

Thanks for your replies.

Still no luck - here are your answers though which may help me further.

Q. Are the discs commercially produced or made at home ?
A. Commercially produced. One was a Maxim one another the Only Fools & Horses given away in the Sun Newspaper.

"Neither WMP 9 or 10 have DVD playback included as standard."
Can they be upgraded?

What seems strange is it is on both WMP and PowerDVD.

I am 99% sure that the Maxim one worked on his old copy of XP.

WJUK