I had a virus and had to reinstall Windows XP Media Edition and now DVD’s won’t play on WMP or any of my other players. It keeps saying i need to get a dvd decoder or something like that. Is that something that comes default with the computer when you first get it but is not on the reinstallation cd? The only thing i’m getting from microsoft’s site is an offer to buy a dvd decoder which seems a bit ridiculous to me. Anyone have any ideas? I know i can get VLC player and it’ll play but i’m tryign to figure out why exactly WMP, Real Player, and everything else can no longer play dvd’s.
Reuse this thread next time for better results.
Because MPEG2/DVD sucks in many ways and the decoders are ALL for pay. You reinstalled (formatted) and lost your third party DVD decoder. You need to reinstall that. Or buy a new decoder. =\
No version of XP comes with a decoder.
Premium and upwards versions of Vista come with a decoder (better than any XP decoder I know of, AFAIK - it at least works tons better for converting content).
I would be intrigued to know how VLC plans on getting away with what they’re doing long term, but that’s for legal people to think about, and I’m sure there’s elements of the MPEG LA (DVD licensing…) that I don’t know about and don’t want to know about.
Maybe you need to use your old software intallation CD from your video card. It should have some sort of dvd media codec for the video card media player. Next time use some sort of drive image to back up your OS. Reinstalling is a bitch!
I gotta figure out where my third party decoder came from in the first place :(. This is the only thing akward after formatting. I got all my vids/music and everything backed up so formatting is not that big of a deal besides this.
You probably got your 3rd party decoder from something that came bundled with your CD/DVD burner like Power DVD or something.
Yeah i think i had Roxio or Sonic DVD Player or something. Sadly I don’t have a cd for those.
no you nee a program to play dvds with. somthing link powerdvd. i run into this all the time building new machines
cyberlink power dvd
preppy, even xp media center doesn’t come with?
I’m pretty certain about that, emphasis added:
The only Microsoft MPEG2/DVD codecs that I know of didn’t exist until Vista, so I’m not sure what third party codec they would have wanted to put in box. Generally it’s really really cost-effective to let people use the DVD decoders that come with the playback applications that come with their DVD drives. If you bought an MCE system without a DVD drive, then the vendor that included a DVD decoder just wasted some substantial $$$ on you for that feature you did not need. During the XP timeframe when DVD drives were around 20% of the market or less (remember XP has been out for forever!) that made much sense. Since we’re probably at about 80%+ DVD drive coverage these days, now it makes more sense to include one - but it’s still a fixed high cost, so-- non-ideal.
I’ll also hammer on the point again that most XP MPEG2 decoders aren’t/weren’t fun to deal with, so if you shipped a 3rd party DVD decoder in box, you would probably have had to ship something known buggy, which all jokes aside is something that the teams try to avoid doing.
go get windows media player 11?? i dunno
if that doesn’t work i guess its “ask a friend” for cyberlink power dvd.
No, that absolutely does not include a DVD decoder. It is unlikely that any free software would include a DVD decoder because as I’ve pointed out repeatedly in this thread they are NOT free.
Maybe we could continue beating this dead horse, or perhaps we could go with the quick summary of “you either need to reinstall your previous software that included this, or you need to ante up to pay for a new version.”
yeah… FFDshow ripped my computer a new asshole… I gotta scavange now for my mainboard box so i can get my reinstall discs… my computer has this nasty malware now that i can’t seem to get rid of. i believe it’s arootkit… lame
yeah i’m 100% certain preppy is right. I’m gonna check with my friends to see if they have an install disc somewhere because I got nothing at the moment and i’m trying to avoid paying $15 just to watch dvds on the computer. I suppose if it was a laptop it’d be more important but at the momen i’m just watching stuff on the tv.
hey i found a folder with my old drivers in it on another harddrive. Is it possible I can use something from this folder to be able to play dvd’s again without paying?
You NEED some kind of DVD player software to play DVDs. That stuff is not just built-in by default, at least not for XP.
I recommend downloading the Combined Community Codec Pack:
http://www.cccp-project.net/
^^ Which is really great and lets you play DVDs on your windows media player, as well as MANY other formats(flash video!).