DyDstrysNit

I don't want to buy any more hardware for it. It's a company laptop and, therefore, not justifiable for watching movies. My main purpose for fighting it this far is, when we upgrade our users, they're all going to wonder why they can't do it. I'd like to solve the problem first and have an answer for them. I have PowerDVD on there and it plays fine in that program, so I'm guessing that Fang has the best take on it in that WMP's soft-decoder has been removed. I'm still looking to see if it can be recovered "for a $mall fee," of course. ^)

8100 upgraded from Win2k. If the hardware has no decoder (which doesn't shock me... it's a pretty old laptop DVD drive), and MPlayer allowed me to play DVD's on pre-GA releases of XP, then M$ had to have pulled the DVD decoder from MPlayer, right? Or am I missing something? If it had the decoder at one time, I wonder why they pulled it... unless they're trying to sell it as a "Plus-type" package...

That's where I am, too. This is really disappointing because I have a version of WMP8 installed on my Win2k system and I LOVE watching DVD on it. The full-screen feature is exactly what I want in a DVD player. Fang-- Since you're a tester, if you have any contacts on the "inside," suggest that they allow us paying customers to be allowed to use the product, please. Thanks, all, for all the help and suggestions. If nothing else, I'm a little smarter. And hey, isn't that what the internet is all about?

Did the deed, had updated drivers, etc... no change. I just don't get it!!!

That's a new idea. I'll try it. Can you tell me where I can download XP setup? When you say to update my decoder card and DVD are you talking hardware or software? Lou-- Tried it with a Region 1 disc... no dice.

Fang-- The KB's were (not surprisingly) unhelpful. Lou-- I thought about region settings and have verified that it's set to region 1. The DVD is reliable as I've used it on many other systems. It's the one I keep in my office for testing DVD drives. I'm losing my starry-eyed view of the new media player. It seems like there's a lot of crap to go through to get it to do what it's supposed to be made for. Is this Linux or something? :Elaugh

The odd thing is that it's worked with pre-release versions of XP from the MSDN packages. I can't figure out why, now that it's a full paid-for copy, it won't play DVD.

It's a James Taylor concert. It played in the drive when it was a Win2k system. I even had a copy of Media Player 8 installed and working. Then when I went to use XP, it goofed up.

:WTF?: ...or was the .zip file the codec install?

Right. That's the wierd part. It worked on pre-GA versions, but not on the actual release. Do you know of a quick way to re-install the video codecs? I've been searching TechNet for it and can't find anything.

:hohum Got the .zip file, installed it, and rebooted. The only change is that it doesn't lock up the player. Still no sound or video. Could it be codec issues?

It's in a Toshiba Tecra 8100 laptop. I've used used some of the beta versions of XP from the MSDN packages and have had no trouble. It's an internal DVD drive, a Savage video card and I have not installed the DVD upgrade...

The DVD is detected in the playlist drop-down, but clicking to play it freezes up the player, and I have to kill it via Task Manager. Anybody know a quick fix, please? Thanks.