Windows Media player won't play dvds anymore!!

I popped in Tropic Thunder the other day on my laptop with Vista and windows
media player came up and I clicked play and the cursor and hour glass popped
up and nothing. I tried it a few different times with different movies to no
avail. Not sure what to do. Thinking about going back to XP, not sure if
that'll help with media player but Vista sucks and I'm broke.

Windows Media player can't play dvds, don't be supprised. I never achieved that before. Because WMP in the Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, or Windows XP operating system on your computer don't install a compatible DVD decoder (also known as a MPEG-2 decoder).
So if you want to play DVD with media player, you have three choice:
1:Purchase a compatible DVD decoder, visit Plug-ins for Windows Media Player.
2: Download a player which could play DVD (MPEG-2 files), like VLC Media Player. It 's free and it can play many formats with good quality.
3. Convert DVD to WMV to playing on Windows Media Player by using this DVD Ripper. It's free for trial, output file have watermark. But the quality is fine, you can purchase, only $35.

On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:53:01 -0800, SMOKEEATERFF
<SMOKEEATERFF@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>I popped in Tropic Thunder the other day on my laptop with Vista and windows
>media player came up and I clicked play and the cursor and hour glass popped
>up and nothing. I tried it a few different times with different movies to no
>avail. Not sure what to do. Thinking about going back to XP, not sure if
>that'll help with media player but Vista sucks and I'm broke.

Which version of Vista do you have ? Only Ultimate and Home Premium
come with DVD decoders supplied for media player - otherwise you have
to purchase one (the NVidia purevideo decoder works well)

This tool will be able to detect installed DVD decoders on Vista :
http://mediacenterexpert.blogspot.co...r-utility.html

HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2009
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs