No response trying to play DVD movies

[videobruce]

I wasn't sure where to put this, but this isn't hardware related. I can read the DVD on either DVD drive in Windows (2k), but I can't play any movie.

I had PowerDVD installed, but had issues with it so I uninstalled it manually since I couldn't do do from add/remove programs (received error message). I searched the drive for all the file names associalted with the program (PowerDVD & Cyberlink). Then I used a Regestry Crawler to do the same. I did check the names to be sure there wasn't anythging that shouldn't be removed the best I could (there was a couple of hundred).

I installed a older DVD program (that I used before), but it won't play any DVD on either drive. These are orginal movies, not backups.

Come to think of it, I did have a related issue with PowerDVD. I tried to get rid of that nagging registration screen by typing in a fake e-mail address and it locked the program. I couldn't play anything afterwards. It just would keep either freezing up or just not playing the DVD, so I uninstalled it.

I can read the DVD on either drive, so it's not a hardware issue. I can read other DVDs' and burn DVDs' (including movie backups) with no issue.

Any ideas? (BTW, I don't want to re-install PowerDVD again).

[algrinch]

*If* this is a PowerDVD software related issue, it might be worth a re-install and then uninstall.

When you re-install the software it re-writes all of the files and registry entries. Hopefully you could then correctly uninstall it using the Add/Remove programs process.

In the past, when a program runs into an error uninstalling I have used the above method with success.

[videobruce]

I really hate to put this thing back in. I did take a look at computer mgn. and found this;

[2Dogs]

I would suggest you remove or disconnect both optical drives, and reboot your pc. Check that device manager shows no entries for either drive, and then power down and reconnect the drives. That should at least rectify the erroneous duplicate listings in device manager.

Your problem does sound like it might have been caused by over zealous registry editing, though. Before you mess with the registry, make sure you back it up - then you can easily recover from mistakes.

good luck!

[videobruce]

The entries were not in DM. I deleted those two entries from Computer Management (Storage/Physical Locations) and it appears to be ok now (so far). I will do further testing later.

[2Dogs]

sorry, my typo I meant computer management!