DVD playback problem

[CodaCide]

i have installed xp and totally reformatted the drive, but i cant playback dvds. it says either i have an installation probem or my graphics setting is too high, however neither is the case. i have reinstalled several times and tried several other ways to remedy it. but to no avail, i have even swapped my cd rom drive for another one. im at a dead end as to whats causing the problem. so please help!! my drivers are installed and appear to be functioning normally.im am not worried about data on my pc, as it is freshly formated so any help is appreciated! tthanx in advance!!

[guns1inger]

Have you installed a software DVD player ? XP does not play DVDs out of the box, it needs to have a player installed.

[CodaCide]

lol yeah i installed interactual player.

[redwudz]

I wouldn't let Interactual player within ten feet of my computer. It has had a bad habit of taking over video playing from other programs. But I don't think that's your problem, it's just a personal observation.

You say you can't play DVDs. Can you play MPEGs or AVI or other types of video?

You might try a freeware player like VLC Media Player. It uses it's own codecs, so you shouldn't have to install much if any of them. If you can play everything but DVDs, then that may be a hardware problem with your drive. You mention a CD ROM drive. I'm assuming you have a DVD drive also as a CD drive won't play DVDs anyway.

Basic stuff, but does the computer recognize the DVD? Or is the problem the player just won't play it? If you 'explore' the DVD, see if you can play the VOBs. VLC can do that.

[Ai Haibara]

Actually, I think (IIRC) the InterActual player doesn't come with its own MPEG2 decoder, so you'd have to already have one installed. There's one in the Tools section to the left, but I haven't tried it, so I don't know how well it'd work in this case.