Hello everybody.  I did a fresh install of Vaio TR2.  Windows XP Professional.  I installed PowerDVD 6.0 Deluxe.  But still it won’t play DVDs.  I can hear audio, but the video playback is only visualizations.  Any ideas?  Apart from the DVD player application, is the any codec that needs to be installed?

Visualizations?  Is that like a hallucination? Try this: open the video file (vob file using MS Media Player).  That may give us a clue if it’s hardware or playerware. Also, a nice free diagnostic tool for DVDs is here:
http://www.dvdinfopro.com/
if you don’t have Nero DVD/CD Speed installed.
Let us know.  We are here to help.
jigs

Actually, by visualizations, I mean those lines and designs that’s being displayed when the player is incapable of displaying the video type.  I even doanloaded k-lite codec pack, wherein it mentions that the pack includes cyberlink dvd decoder http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm.  But still, the video won’t play.  When I arrive home, I’ll try playback with WMP.  I doubt it will run.

ah, when my dvd player cant read a disk it just says so (nero). But try WMP…it often plays things that for some reason cyberlink DVD could not.  I would be hesitant of throwing codecs at the problem, but instead try and get WMP to play the DVD first. until then,
jigs

You need the dvd decoder

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/bridgman02april15.mspx

[quote author=“Gilbert”]You need the dvd decoder

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/bridgman02april15.mspx

Gilbert, that advice was written in 2002!  If one downloads/upgrades to Windows Media Player 10, I am pretty sure all u need to play a DVD is in there, no?  I am not a big fan of this player, but it is useful as it seems to work on almost anything, and it’s free.

I’m curious Jang - did you Uninstall Nero by chance?  I remember reading a post on http://club.cdfreaks.com/index.php? that uninstalling CD/DVD recording software like Nero and others changes the registry rendering DVD playback inop. I have no idea where that post is, and that was about a year ago, but I do think that Nero had problems with uninstall, and then messing up your system…

cheers,
jigs

Sorry, that was me posting above.  Forgot to login

[quote author=“Gilbert”]You need the dvd decoder

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/bridgman02april15.mspx

Do you mean apart from the DVD player I have installed, Cyberlink PowerDVD, I still need a separate DVD decoder program?

[quote author=“Gilbert”]You need the dvd decoder

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/bridgman02april15.mspx

Do you mean apart from the DVD player I have installed, Cyberlink PowerDVD, I still need a separate DVD decoder program?

[quote author=“Anonymous”]If it is a problem due to uninstalling, try running Crap Cleaner, ccleaner.com and using the facility, ‘scan for issues’.

This “should” resolve any issues from remaining software.

very cool program downloaded it after reading this post, and to think of the time i had been wasting manually deleting all that crap! thanks…

Hello guys, ran ccleaner.  I must admit, my notebooks boots up a lot faster.  Thanks for the tip.

As for using WMP to play dvd movie, all it says is WMP encountered an error, then stopped :-(

Any other ideas? 

BTW, I did use the fix issues command in the utility.

I installed Cyberlink PowerDVD 2.0 onto the notebook.  And the player worked sweetly.  I also tried WMP, this time around, it played without a hitch.  Later, I installed POwerDVD 6.0 Deluxe on top of the 2.0 version, and it detected it.  It says it will uninstall the version 2.0 first, before installing.  After installation, everything worked also.  I wonder why????  Thanks for all your help.