Help, Please: Playing DVDs on New OS

I recently upgraded from Win ME to Win XP Pro. Before, on ME, I could play DVDs just fine. Now, with XP, it won’t work. Apparently, I need something called a “codex.” The same thing happened to a friend who went from 'Win 98 to 2000. Could someone please tell me…

  1. What exactly is a “codex”?

  2. Why do I need one now, but didn’t need one before?

  3. How or where do I (and my friend with Win 2000) get a codex.

  4. How do I install it?

(Both of us are using notebooks.)

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and I forgot to say: any help would be greatly appreciated.

That’s “codecs”. If you want to play DVDs, get “Media Player Classic”. It’ll do the job.

link

Many thanks, Blue Sky. I installed that program, but it’s jerky, no smooth video. I just want to use my old DVD player program–it worked fine. Is it possible to to that? Why did it work with ME but not with XP?

Then please tell us the name of your old program.

That’s odd. It’s always played smooth as silk. You may want to check at the Microsoft website and upgrade your media player. WMP 10.0 will play DVDs.

It’s WinDVD

Media Player Classic has always worked fine for me. And, as far as i know, there’s no reason that WinDVD shouldn’t work with XP either. You might want to look into whether you have some other video issue.

For example, do non-DVD video files (avi, mpeg1, mov, etc.) play OK? Or is all video on your computer a problem?

It’s odd that WinDVD is not working, because commercial DVD-playing software like WinDVD generally comes complete with the mpeg2 decoder that is required to play DVD files. It might be worth uninstalling and reinstalling WinDVD.