I had bought a dell laptop with no operating system on it so i went down and bought the whole version of win.xp home edition and loaded it. And it runs fine but my dvd dont play movies Why?
someone told me to download a decoder how do i know its the write one or can i purchase a new media player with all the drivers and the need decoder
Do you have DirectX installed? Type dxdiag into your Run box and see what it shows. I'm simply guessing that some component is missing from your installation. You might also talk to Dell about it.
You may have to buy a DVD Decoder Add-on. This is from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/bridgman02april15.mspx Most users with computers that have DVD drives have DVD decoders preinstalled by their hardware manufacturers. You can easily find out if you have one the first time you attempt to play a DVD movie. When you insert a DVD movie into your DVD drive for the first time, you'll be prompted to play the DVD movie, as shown in the figure below. If you select the Always do the selected action check box, you won't see this dialog box again when inserting a DVD. Click Play DVD Video, and then click OK to start Windows Media Player and start the playback. At this point, one of two things will happen. Either your movie will begin to play right away, or you will get a Windows Media Player error message, saying that a compatible DVD decoder is not installed on your computer, so the DVD will not be played. If you get this message, you need a DVD decoder. If you bought a PC equipped with a DVD drive, check with the computer manufacturer. They may have updated Windows XP DVD decoder drivers available, often for free. If you upgraded your PC to Windows XP, and you already had a functioning DVD decoder, five minutes after the upgrade is complete Windows XP will launch an upgrade wizard that will help you locate your updated decoder, if possible. If you have any questions about upgrading, check the Knowledge Base article: Supported Software MPEG-2 DVD Decoders in Windows Media Player for Windows XP. If you built your own PC and installed a DVD drive, it may or may not have come with a DVD decoder. Check the manufacturer's Web site. Purchasing a DVD Decoder Pack Add-on If you are unable to find an installed DVD decoder, you can purchase one from the same vendors from which PC manufacturers license theirs. Ravisent, InterVideo, and CyberLink all have DVD Decoder Packs available for purchase and download over the Internet. Windows Media Technologies also lists third-party software vendors who have DVD Decoder Packs available. The cost from each vendor runs about $14.95, unless you want to pay a little more and get a combo-pack which also includes MP3 encoding. I tried products from the three vendors mentioned above, and they all worked great. Their decoder packs installed quickly and easily, and as soon as installation was complete, Windows Media Player immediately started to play the movie after I inserted a DVD.
when you say movies if you mean dvds then you need the mpeg-2 codec The download is on my page follow the link in my sig if you mean divx or xvid avi's I woud recomend this Download K-Lite Mega Codec Pack http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Mega_Codec_Pack.htm
