System freezes when playing DVD

Hi, Long:

Of the things the Dell techies suggested, only the start-up stuff makes sense. The upper/lower filters should not have any impact on playing DVDs. In fact, they haven't even isolated the problem to a hardware versus software issue. Typical!

Two questions:

1. What program are you using to play DVDs? Tried uninstalling/reinstalling/checking for updates?
2. If you have a non-copy encrypted DVD, try copying the video folder to a location on your hard drive and play the movie from that location. I can't explain how your program would do this. You have to figure it out. If the movie plays from the hard drive without freezing, then it points to the drive as a source of the problem.

Hi Osprey,

I am using windows media player that came with the computer.  I assumes everything is up to date since I just got the computer and the auto update is on.  But I will check. Also since I just got the computer from dell, do you see any benefits in doing pc restore? I haven't add anything to the computer since I got it.

When you say copying the video folder to the hard drive is that something like using dvd shrink and save it to the hard drive?  I was just watching Bourne Identity then I had to stop it to do something else.  When I clicked the "stop" button on the window media player my computer froze.  I hard to shut the whole thing down.  If I keep forcing my computer to shut down this way, surely it can't be good for my computer...correct? Thanks. 

Could you clarify what you did and the result? Are you able to watch video files on your hard drive without the program freezing?

If that works without any trouble, then that would seem to point the finger at your drive.

Osprey,

Sorry about the last  post not being clear.  Playing the movie from the hard drive is still freezes my system.  But everything seem to be happening in the "Fullscreen" mode.

It will start out in smallscreen.  I can change anything in this mode and the system won't freeze.  If I switch to fullscreen, the movie will continue to play without problems but will freeze if I click on the screen a few times during the movie. 

I turned off window media player as a default player.  This is because the player will play the movie in full screen when I insert the dvd into the drive.  Turning it off allow me to play it in smallscreen.  Sure enough I get the same result as when I play it from the hard drive.

So  would it be software or hardware or both? 

Try VLC Media Player (link in my signature).

You'll eventually learn to avoid Windows Media Player unless it's absolutely necessary. Too many problems and far too much overhead for such a quirky program. In the next version of Windows, you'll be able to ditch it completely. :)

Windows will rebuild them if needed.

Glad that's working! :)

Osprey,

No freezing with VLC media player.  I tried with multiple DVDs and had no problem.  Thank you very much.

By the way, since I deleted my upper and lower filters already, am I going to need them for anything?  What are they for?