Vista Ultimate 64-bit & DVD playback on Windows Media Player 11

Hi all - first off I apologise if this thread repeats several old ones, but having been using Vista for over a year, I eventually got around to playing a commercial DVD for the first time. Or trying to play a DVD rather. I get the following (seemingly common) error 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."

There are countless ideas to correct this online, but nothing definitive and I would rather not switch to another media player as I value my remaining hard-disk space and I shouldn't have to.

Microsoft claim that Vista Ultimate ships with a DVD decoder and supports DVD playback. My NVidia graphics card driver is updated (is this the same as a video card?). No DVDs that I have tried will play.

I am not an expert by any means and would greatly appreciate any help as I am at a bit of a loss. I don't know whether the problem is to do with 64-bit vs 32-bit or the decoder or something different. But I am without a TV & DVD player for a few weeks and was relying on the laptop.

For info, I have a Rizeon M571 (Sager NP5793) with:
Vista Ultimate 64-bit
Windows Media Player 11
NVidia GeForce 8800GTX 512MB
Disk Drive: Blu-Ray-R/8xDVD +/-RW
Screen Resolution: 1920x1200

 

Thank Microsoft for yet another vague error description. I have an idea of a couple of things you can do (in order):

- ensure that the DVD is fine by playing it elsewhere
- try playing the DVD with VLC, a different media program: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
- check your laptop manufacturer's webpage for any updates for optical disc firmware updates

The following suggestion was retrieved from here.

- install the K-lite codec package and try again with WMP
- remove any programs like Nero, Roxio, or WinDVD
- ensure that the optical drive isn't making any unusual noises

 

Ok, so I went through your suggestions:
- DVDs were fine elsewhere
- No other media player programmes
- optical drive works fine for CDs, CD-ROMs, etc

Then I rebooted, downloaded VLC and confirmed that the DVD would play using that programme. Then I decided to try again using WMP before moving on to the codec suggestion - and lo and behold, it's suddenly working fine on WMP.

No disc information or anything, but picture and sound will do fine given where I was last night.

Do you know if the VLC download could have had an impact here - should I keep it or uninstall it?

Anyway, no idea how it got fixed, but there you go - thanks for taking the time to help out.

 

I troubleshooted a similar problem a long time ago, but it involved specific Windows system files that had been corrupted and were critical to DVD playback. This functionality is a given on Windows, but some codec packages and multimedia programs like Nero can mess around with the OS. I can't really offer a more specific answer, but I would recommend you keep VLC either way; it is very useful for playing files that WMP can't. Ex, FLV, MP4, MKV.

 

Suggest making sure your DVD drive is set to the correct region for the DVD's you're trying to play. It is found by right clicking the drive icon in My Computer & go to Properties.