Hey there all.
Attention Sefy & crew!

About 2 weeks ago, I finally had a nice stable WinXP configuration running (after about 10 installs)
I religiously set restore points, JUST IN CASE.
Anyhow, I ripped ALMOST FAMOUS to my Primary Slave Drive (20Gig Western Digital) with Smart Ripper 227 and did a complete BACKUP - not just the movie portion.
Anyhow, I run Win DVD 2000, and as long as I rename the folder i ripped to VIDEO_TS, then WinDVD detected it as an available drive. Cool. So OK i hit play, and VOILA! It plays SWEETLY, menus and all! By the way, keep in mind - I have no standalone player, and If I play a DVD from my Pioneer 115 16X with any player (i use winDVD & ATI's player) then the TV out on my Rage Fury Pro kicks in with the macrovision. So I rip to disable macrovision, I'm not concerned with re-encoding (its only temporary, so i can watch it)
OK - so it worked GREAT (even with the ATI DVD player- with reg editing telling it DVD was my D drive)
Now - i did a RAM upgrade and it turned out the RAM was bad, and I couldn't even boot in Safe Mode so I did a clean install again (i thought it was an incompatible driver, long story)
Anyhow - I installed win dvd again, (in XP) and went to play the movie again, and it was NASTY - it hangs, sounds choppy, menus dont work, etc.
AND I DIDNT CHANGE ANYTHING TO THE RIPPED FILES
so ive tried other players, INCLUDING Cinematograph using the IFO file and they tell me that THE REGION MARKING ON THIS DISK IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE PLAYER.
So I tried Ripping LUCKY NUMBERS - no dice there either.
I did some reading, learning that Windows itself sets a region with the OS and I got DVD genie to try and take care of that - NOPE.
Anyhow - if anyone has any ideas....
BTW - I have REGION FREE firmware on my DVD Drive