blu-ray wont work on G72G-A2

Hey all. I recently purchased an ASUS G71G-A2 laptop, and I'm having an extremely frustrating issue with the BD Rom player. Some basic information:

OS: XP 32bit
Graphics Card: NVidia GeForce 9800GS
Optical Drive: Optiarc BD-5500S

First, the laptop came with WinDVD. This program wouldn't play the Band of Brothers BluRay that I tried. I emailed the service people from where I got the laptop, and they have been fairly useless. I downloaded Cyberlink's PowerDVD Ultra and their BD Utility to see if your computer can play BluRay and apparently the problem is my driver. I've looked everywhere, but I can't find a driver from ASUS, so I downloaded the latest driver I could find from NVidia's website (179.something I think). I tried installing the driver, but the Cyberlink program doesn't detect any change. I think I'm installing the driver ok, but because I'm fairly new to this stuff I'm not entirely sure.

I'd really like to play Blu-Rays. Any help would be excellent!

Thanks!

 

can you play them in Windows Media Player?

 

Try uninstall WinDVD in safe mode. Restart laptop. Install WinDVD in safe mode. Shutdown laptop (don't just restart). Power on laptop.

 

Is this the Overlay error?

I also have this issue on the N50vn, and i tried everything and did not get any BD playback. I ripped it to M2TS and viewed Batman DK in SMplayer instead.

Really quite lame of them to send a laptop that doesn't work with the included Bluray drive software they include.

 

im not sure what an overlay error even is...

but David, i tried to uninstall in safe mode, but i got error 1628 when i ran the installer in safe mode. i did everything i could (delete temp files, made sure there wasn't that idriver.exe file or whatever running), but i was forced to uninstall and reinstall in normal windows. no luck...

i think there might be many people with this problem, does anyone have any insight?

 

update: I tried to Flash update my bd player with an update from optiarc, but the flash update failed, even in safe mode. any suggestions?

 

I just received my g71g-a2. I had the same problem with my blu-ray not playing. it seems that the win-dvd BD for asus was not installed. It tried to go to windows media player. I rebooted and installed the win dvd player and it works now. The one thing I had to do was go into autoplay settings<in control panel> and set to start with win dvd whenever a bluray disc was put in the drive. after those two things Ive had no problems

 

well, i guess i'll try uninstalling and re-installing again... how do you get into the autoplay settings?

 

autoplay section in control panel. but install the software first, then in the dropdown box for HD in autostart you should see WinDvd as an option. set it and save it. then you should be good to go.
when you put a BD in does it always go to explore the disk? thats what happened to me. I dont know why windvd wasnt installed at factory, but I know it wasnt because it wasnt an option on the dropdown menu til I installed it. they must use same disk to image the HD for the A1 as the A2

 

ok, so clearly i'm doing something wrong, or blind, or something out, but i can't find the autoplay in the control panel. when i put in a disk, the drive sounds like it tries to read the disk, but nothing happens.

 

ok, so I tried uninstalling and reinstalling both WinDVD and PowerDVD Ultra and still nada. Updated both my video and sound drivers (with plenty of restarts in between), but BD Advisor still tells me that my driver is not compatable. Has anyone else run into this issue? Or does anyone have something to try?

 

Have you tried using WHQL GPU drivers?

 

Well, in checking with cyberlink about the problem, they asked me to do a dxdiag, which gives a basic system overview it seems. there is something about the whql there, but i dont know if im looking at the right thing. I can post these results if it would help.
Ps- sorry for the ignorance, but if you could explain what a WHQL GPU driver is, maybe I could give you better info...

 

WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certified drivers are drivers that have gone through a testing process performed by Microsoft to ensure the best compatibility. You can find these drivers at laptopvideo2go.com. The drivers with a green box in the WHQL column means they are certified WHQL drivers.

 

thanks for the info. upon closer inspection, the video driver is whql certified, but i'll have to check on the others. would that make a difference in being able to run the blu-ray?

 

I haven't tried it personally, but I have heard others reporting that only WHQL drivers would let them play blu-ray movies.

 

If you use the modded inf trick to install display drivers then it breaks BR playback in PowerDVD (been there, done it and got the T-Shirt) as the modded inf is not signed correctly.

There are 2 ways around it.

First way. Download the newest notebook drivers from nVidia. They are only 179.xx versions but they are fully signed etc.

The second way is very long (takes about 10m if everything goes correctly)

1a) if you have Vista64 then you need to re-boot with driver signing disabled for the install, failure to do this will mean the drivers do not get installed correctly.
1) Download the newest drivers from laptop2go and also download the modded inf file
2) Unpack the drivers
3) rename the original supplied inf to a new name (xxxxx.inf2 works)
4) copy the modded inf file into the folder
5) install as normal but DO NOT REBOOT
6) delete the modded inf file from the folder
7) rename the old inf file back again
8) go to device manager and choose to update the display drivers manually
9) choose the option to pick the driver (don't let it search as it will not work)
10) Point it at the folder above
11) Choose the closest card to your current one (your one will not be shown, you may have to remove the tick from the selection box to see them)
12) Say YES to the "this driver is not for your hardware"
13) once done, reboot normally

If you have a problem then re-boot using the F8 trick and choose VGA display to get back into windows if the screen does not show after a normal boot.

 

Thankyou, i figured the Nvidia driver was at fault or the modified drivers, but was waiting for an official Nvidia WHQL driver that surpasses the currently installed 180.84 driver, before testing.

But I have tried the Asus WinDVD8, PowerDVD Ultra and the Demo version of WinDVD9 and none could play my bluray discs. I'm sure after your explanation I will manage solve my issues. Thankyou! (rep added..