Relevant PC specs:
ASUS K8V-MX, Sempron 3100, 512MB DDR440 RAM, Pioneer DVR111D, GeForce 7300GT. Win2k Chinese / SP2 / DirectX9c.
I can read / write DVDs fine with the Pioneer, so I assume that is functioning properly. Problem is when I insert a DVD (home made or bought, makes no difference) it won’t play. System recognizes the disk and attempts to autoplay, but then there’s an error message to say that system cannot play the disk. It suggests a few possibilities as to what the problem might be.
First is that memory may be insufficient. I recall a few other machines with only 512MB of RAM that could play DVDs just fine.
Second is that another process may be using the video resources. Even with everything else shut down I will still get this message.
Third is that the video card may be lacking or the driver not properly installed. I have the latest (v91.31) nvidia reference drivers from their website and can play games like HL2 no problem…
I can read the disk contents just fine from Windows Explorer, copy them, and the disks play fine on my consumer DVD player. Ideas?
I assume you mean video DVDs. What software are you using to play them ? You need a 3rd party player, such as PowerDVD. What did messages did it give ? What did it suggest to do ? Or where they in Chinese ?
I have Nero Show Time installed as part of Nero7 Premium, so yes, I have a DVD ‘player’. The message is from system, in Chinese, and I translated the three suggestions it made in the original post. If I run Show Time I can force it play the disk, but I still get that stupid error message from Windows each time I put a disk in.
Hmm. Maybe if I set Nero as the default player it will sidestep this silliness…
I’ve used PowerDVD on a 250MHz Pentium 2 with 128MB ram, it just about played it without dropping too many frames. So yours is more than good enough. I would just tell it to STFU or ignore it.
[quote=“Big Fluffy Matthew”]I would just tell it to STFU or ignore it.[/quote]How do you say ‘STFU’ in Windows? 
www.rpc1.org first of all, should be a firmware upgrade there that takes off any region protection on the drive.
Secondly, are you sure Nero can play video DVDs?
Try CyberLink or InterVideo, I think one or the other has a free demo available
Nero Showtime plays my DVDs no problem. It’s Windoze that says I cannot. I insert any DVD that should autoplay (drive is set to autoplay) and Windoze says it can’t run it. I start Showtime, insert the same disk, Windoze says it can’t run it, but I press play in Showtime and it runs. Basically, the problem is that Windoze doesn’t know wtf it is talking about. Situation normal.
OK, I found the root of the problem. Windoze has it’s own DVD player and that insists on trying to play the DVD. The name of the application is ‘dvdplay.exe’ and it’s stashed away in C:\WINNT\system32
Even though the file association seems to be set with Showtime, this stupid Windoze app tries to autoplay the disks when inserted. Even if there’s no disk in the drive, when I start this app manually it will pop up the same ‘unable to play’ error message. :raspberry:
I guess I could set the drive not to autoplay and then just launch Showtime manually when I want to play a disk. Stupid, stupid Windoze! 
You should give VLC a shot. It is a free media player, and it handles everything, including obscure, exotic formats. It can also decode dolby digital 5.1, handles .flac audio files, and plays DVD Audio. Find it at www.videolan.org/vlc/ . It contains no spyware/adware/malware. Did I mention it is free?
[quote=“jianadaren2006”]You should give VLC a shot. It is a free media player, and it handles everything, including obscure, exotic formats. It can also decode dolby digital 5.1, handles .flac audio files, and plays DVD Audio. Find it at www.videolan.org/vlc/ . It contains no spyware/adware/malware. Did I mention it is free?[/quote]It’s also region free and will play any dvd on any drive, as far as I know.