Major DVD Problems

I have an Asus s96j computer with an ATI Mobility Radeon x1600. I got this computer over the summer and it used to play dvds just fine. Over the last few months though i have not been able to watch them. Windows Media Player gives me this message: "Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because there is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder, and video card. Try installing an updated driver for your video card". Now I just did this, and im still getting the same message. When I try to play a DVD on VLC media player the video gets choppy my CPU usage shoots through the roof, and the sound sounds like a chainsaw. I have also set the IDE stuff to DMA. I want it to be known that I am Computer Caveman, and know nothing about this kind of stuff, this is all the stuff that i have gotten from Windows lovely troubleshooter. I have XP Professional. So does anybody out there have a clue on what is going on? And is it possible that my DVD drive is shot?

 

Do you have another computer you can try your DVDs out with? Alternatively, you might want to use a different program to open your DVDs.

 

The DVDs that i tried to play were ones that i could play before on my computer, and as i said i have tried a bunch of different players to no effect. The only one that comes close to being right is the ASUSTEK DVD player, and even that has the chainsaw sound.... I just have no clue what in the hell is going on.

 

You said that you have already checked that the IDE interface is not in PIO mode. If it is in DMA mode then I would suggest that the DVD drive
is defective. However, note that if the ODD is having trouble reading discs then the interface may switch back to PIO mode as described by Microsoft here. PIO mode will drastically reduce the ODD performance and increase CPU utilisation to the extent that the computer's response to other input becomes erratic.

John

 

Yes DMA is the mode that im in. Is there nothing else that might be wrong?

 

Forgot to ask which OS are you using: XP or Vista? And did you update or install any new software recently?

 

Im running XP service pack 2, and the only program that i remember downloading recently is SUPER, which happens to be a video converting program, and the only reason i downloaded this was because WMP was having some strange issues, and still does. Whenever i try to play mpeg based files, it will load the file and wont play, and when i click to advance the video on the blue bar on the bottom it will just go to a freeze frame. Also the dvds werent working before all this. Although i do think that the Mpeg and dvd problems were around the same time.

 

Did you try playing DVD's with Media Player Classic?

If you are still having a problem it could really be the DVD drive as stated.

 

So I got angry, and just went to system properties, and uninstalled a bunch of drivers and somewhere along the way, i got my DVD drive to work again. Thanks everyone! But for some strange reason Windows Media Player still wont work. So does anybody know of an effective way to get it off my system so i can start from scratch?

 

Which WMP version are you using? If you're on 10 and you download 11 it will over-ride the earlier version

 

I had 11 and last night i downgraded to 10. I will upgrade now and let you know if it works.

 

Yep I re-upgraded to 11, and it still doesnt work.

 

Well i Upgraded my computer to vista ultimate, and all is well now