DVD's no longer Play on my PC, but drive reads data

[andrewjhanlon]

Guys, I've tried everything to fix this & can't. I would really appreciate any advice you could give me.

All DVD's which used to work on my PC, now don't. When I insert one, the CD-Rom part of it (i.e. the data, HTML screens, & startup screen work), but when I actually select the option to play the video, my computer does one of two things :

1) If I'm in Intervideo WinDVD, the video tries to play along, but only the sound. The sound jumps & skips the entire time (Sounds like a very jumpy tape, or badly scratched record). No picture is seen, just a black window).
2) If I'm in PC Friendly (Came with the DVD), when I actually select "Play" to play the film, the window goes black, & my entire PC locks-up. I can't even close the application by pressing CTRL-Alt-Delete.

I have reinstalled both WinDVD, PC-Friendly, & cleaned the DVD (No scratches evident). I even formatted my hard-drive & reinstalled from scratch.

In addition to that I have :
-Reinstalled all the drivers with latest versions
- DMA is on
- Display settings reduced to nearly minimum.
- Graphic acceleration brought down.


The specs for my PC are :
PC : Fujitsu Xpert (1 MHz),Windows Me
DVD player : Samsung DVD-Rom SD612S
Display Adapter : NVidia Riva TNT2 Model64
Hard Disk Controllers : Via Bus Master PCI IDE Controller

Driver versions : 1) Display : File ver 4.12.01.0532, 2) DVD-Rom, ver is the latest, 3) Via Busmaster file ver 4.90.3000


I am completely at a loss with this one, I'd also just love to know what the heck's wrong !!


Any help & advice will be very much appreciated.


Regards,

- Andy

[offline]

Hmm..

Could be an overlay or directshow issue. Try downloading a trial copy
of PowerDVD (uninstall WinDVD 1st) and see what happens.

If powerDVD does not work, try both installing an earlier version
of your video drivers and a different version of windows media player
( a new version is ok but an earlier version like 6.4 is better )

[andrewjhanlon]

Offline rules !


Your suggestion works, and my DVD drive is now happily up-and-running !

PowerDVD works quite well. However, whenever I have the video on full-screen mode, and then want to call-up the video controller, the screen has to resize itself to a smaller size. This presents no immediate problem, except for when I select "Full screen" again. The video expands back to full-screen, but then :

1) A vertically-textured ghost image of the video controller is left on the screen (i.e. the controller's image is displayed in bands of vertical lines, almost like a barcode).
2) And traces of vertically-textured black lines are left over the area of the video image which fell outside the previously-reduced video window. Again these resemble a barcode.
3) All these lines/images don't disappear, unless I stop the video, exit PowerDVD, and then re-enter PowerDVD, resuming from where I left-off.


Have you guys got any suggestions to cure that ?


Thanks again for your help, Offline !

- Andy

[redwudz]

Sounds like a issue with your video card refreshing the display. Not sure what the cure there is. You mention PC-Friendly. I have had no end of problems with my computer when I have mistakenly installed that in the past. It has royally screwed up my PC so much that I have had to reformat to get rid of the crap. Very difficult to remove without causing damage. Interactual player is another PC DVD player I treat like a virus.

[andrewjhanlon]

Thanks Redwudz.

I agree with you on WinDVD, I think WinDVD is more invasive than helpful.

I followed Offline's suggestion, removing WinDVD from my system, and then installed PowerDVD. After that, PowerDVD and PCFriendly worked fine (Apart from the problem with lines I mentioned above).


Just to see what would happen, I then tried reinstalling WinDVD again, leaving PowerDVD still on my machine. My DVD player came back with the same problem that I had when I started (Re first submission) !

So I uninstalled WinDVD, and that got everything working again, except for PC Friendly, which now doesn't play no matter what I uninstall or install !


So I ask the rhetorical question : If WinDVD is not invasive, wouldn't it have returned my machine to exactly the same state it was in (i.e. everything working together fine) before reinstalling it ?


- My advice would be to avoid WinDVD at all costs, because once it's been on your machine, it doesn't leave without a messy exit.



- Andy