On my brother-in-laws laptop he can't watch dvds anymore. When he puts a dvd in the drive the green light shows up then just shuts off. And the dvd doesn't play. He said that the computer tells him that the needs a decoder. He has a Dell Inspiron E1405. So if anyone can help me out here that would be great.
I always use PowerDVD, give that a try. There are also free DVD players, but the ones I tried were crap.
VLC has built in DVD playback but it's a bit shaky. You can add a dvd decoder without installing a huge program like PowerDVD and use media player to play the dvds, by installing GPL MPEG 1/2 Decoder. Link: http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=GPL_MPEG-1_2_Decoder I would recommend that option as IMO PowerDVD is too large, takes up too much memory, and is generally a pain, when all you need is a decoder.
How do you play a DVD with just a decoder? Even with a codec installed you need an application to play the DVD such as media player. Maybe you need to upgrade your PC if you can't even run PowerDVD without issues. It works perfectly on my laptop, never had any issues at all. Tecra M1 1.6 Centrino 1.25GB RAM although befoe I added the extra 1GB it still worke perfectly. Installe size on HDD 30MB.
My computer is an athlon 64 3500+ (socket 939) w/1 gig of dual channel ram. Believe me it CAN run PowerDVD with NO problems. The thing is, because of it's large memory footprint, clunky interface, and propensity for taking over all file extensions that are mpeg related, I choose not to use it. Windows systems have media player already on them and the newer ones (9 or later, maybe even earlier versions than that) can playback dvds with a DVD encoder installed. That being said you can also then use a program like pcfriendly dvd (good for those not that talented with computers) to do playback also, nice thing being it comes on a lot of discs. Basicly, why pay for something that is not as friendly, not as easy to use, as something you can get for free. --EDIT-- Note the memory footprint to which I refer is how much it takes up in resources, perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Also, WMP (already installed, so no extra space), installer for gpl mpeg decoder: 250KB. Installer for PowerDVD: 79.1MB.
Hey squewheet. You said that it doesnt play dvds ANYMORE. So im guessing it used to be able to play them ok. Well, Ripper (one of aD's trust members ), just solved my problem with my DVD drive, it wasnt picking anything up and it said that the drive was in accesible. He told me to uninstall all the IDE drivers, and then reboot. (control panel, administrive tools, computer management...) Just a thought.
