Bought a DVD here. Played it successfully on my Dell (bought here) laptop. Loaned it to a friend, who tried to play it on her Dell (bought here) laptop. And she got a “region difference” error. She’s previously successfully watched DVDs on the laptop.
How could that happen? My only speculation is that while all the stuff involved is from the same region, the friend is not, maybe she somehow modded the laptop to watch movies from the old country? Seems doubtful at any rate and she never mentioned it.
Any fix?
Insufficient information.
Where is “here”?
Many laptops come with DVD/CD players that are not optimized (for lack of a better word) for the user’s preferred DVD Region. Better systems warn you that you have five opportunities to set your Region preference before the the preference is permanently locked, often with the region code of the fifth DVD used.
Perhaps your Dell laptop is already optimized for Region 1 (USA). Your friend may have been using different DVDs with different region codes for the first five times, and they all worked. However, perhaps the fifth time it locked with that DVD’s code requirement and it isn’t Region 1. Now you provide them with your latest DVD (Region 1) and on their sixth use of their DVD player, the player has already been locked by the last DVD used and it wasn’t a Region 1 disc.
Or it could be a faulty DVD player and I’m typing out of my ass.
I concur with the idea that one of your laptops has had its region code set wrong. Whether that is a permanent problem or could be reset via, say, a firmware upgrade, I leave between you, your PC tech support, and Google.
To check
Start -> Computer -> Select DVD Drive -> Right Click -> Select Properties
Then find the tab that says “Hardware” (it won’t have quotes)
Select the drive from the list and about 3/4 down you will see a button marked “Properties.” Click this
Then you will see tabs. One will say “DVD Region” (no quotes around it). Select this tab.
It will tell you the current DVD region and how many times left you can change it