SOLUTION FOR PLAYING VCD ON WINDOWS XP

[DinoPollard]

Surely I must be missing the point here - BUT if you simply open media player in XP, go to files and explore the cd and select the DAT files they open and play. Even if the CD contains many .dat files they are listed.

Also Powerdvd plays VCDs just fine.

You're not missing anything. I've tried that. Several times. On several VCDs. And it doesn't work.

[vitualis]

Assuming your CD drivers aren't screwed up, the other possibility is that your VCDs were authored / written in a strange way...

All my VCDs play perfectly on just about every PC on WMP (cringe) or software DVD players...

For people with playback difficulties, just how exactly did you make your VCDs? What authoring program, what burning program, etc.

Regards.

[DinoPollard]

I didn't make my VCDs, I bought them off eBay. I thought maybe I might have gotten screwed, but then I asked my roommate to try them on his computer and they worked fine.

[buzzybos]

SOLUTION FOUND :

As I suspected, absolutely nothing to do with hardware.
With this solution Windows Media Player 8 will play the DAT files. ...

That doesn't really make sense. All editing the registry in that way does is associate WMP with DAT files. You don't need to do that to play the files, though it may make it more convenient because you can just double click on them. But that's all it does, it doesn't fix any problem.

As noted above, you can just open WMP and browse to the file and play it, without doing the registry thing. And if that doesn't work, doing the registry thing won't help.

In addition, no one who doesn't know what they are doing should edit their Registry files, you can seriously mess up your computer. I'd never recommend that except to experienced users, and unless absolutely necessary.

If you want to associate files types - I don't know about XP but in Win2K, you just open up a folder, choose Tools, Folder Options, File Types and you can edit or create a "Registered File Type"

As to fixing the real problem - if opening the files and playing them doesn't work, it probably is a missing driver of some kind - wish I could help, don't have WinXP.

But you may want to try checking / changing the ASPI layer, see Bart's ASPI page:
http://www.nu2.nu/aspi/

[Aaliyah_Fan_Forever]

it didnt work,my computer says "Error updating the system tegistry" help A.S.A.P

[buzzybos]

THE ORIGINAL POST IS NOT A FIX.



Read the rest of the thread, especially toward the bottom.

[arealgijoe]

I ahve winXP aka Xtra Problems, Expires Peridodicly, Xtra Profit$ (for mic$h1t.

I inserted a VCD from my VCD recorder, selected the file and selected to open with windows media player; Worked great, set windows media player as my default player for vcd.

JD

[gone64]

My problem is, I cant get my cdrom drive to recognize anything on the vcd....files folders or anything. However my CD writer drive does show a couple of files (2 .cda files). I burned my vcd with Nero.

[nanz1]

I'm having the same problem and I don't know what to do. My vcd won't play on my dvd players anymore either. They use to be able to play on my computer and my standalone dvd players. I think it was Nero that I used when I burned them as vcds. Are these vcds considered to be gone now or is there a way to save them? HELP! Also the files come up as Track 1cda and Track 2cda, that's all that I can get it to read.

[nanz1]

I forgot to say that I'm using ME not XP.

[ghoster]

why don't just download a vcd player instead of trying to get media player to play vcds.

[nanz1]

Well my question is that they played on both my computer and standalone dvd players before with no problem. Why is not playing anymore?