My little sister got a used laptop for college, and it’s got a DVD-ROM drive, but as far as I can tell, no DVD player software. I thought the latest Windows Media Player might do it, and it does, but only if you have XP, apparently. She’s got 98, and won’t be switching to XP anytime soon.
So where the heck do I get a player that works in 98? I’m not looking for anything fancy. She doesn’t need region-free, or DivX ripping or anything like that, just a simple pop-in-charlie’s-angels-and-hit-play functionality. And I’d prefer not to have to pay for it, if possible (i.e. free/shareware, not warez.)
First, to play DVDs on your computer, you need either a software or a hardware decoder. If you have one or the other, try running “mplayer2.” There should be an “Open DVD” option in the File menu.
There are a few good software DVD players. I prefer WinDVD, but the software will cost you $50.
Here is a link to a freeware player. I’ve never tried it, but if you don’t want to spend any money, it’s worth a try. You may also want to enter the words “freeware software DVD player” into a search engine to see if you can find any others if you don’t find that one to your liking.
If the DVD player came with the laptop, it should have came with the software to use it.
First, put a DVD in the player and see if it auto starts. I am assuming you already went through c:\Program Files. Try looking through CDs that came with the laptop. If it is a major brand laptop, you can go to the manufacturer’s website and download it.
Jim
The DVD player did come with the laptop, but as I said, it was used, so if it came with the software, it’s not there anymore. (I looked through the whole harddrive.) The DVD does autostart, but only to say “exit this program and start your DVD player application”.
typhoon I don’t think there’s a decoder there, but I don’t know. how do I tell?
Of course, I missed the obvious that DarkScooterPie picked up on. It’s a Dell, and if she just called Dell in the first place, they proably could have helped her. So that’s what I told her to do. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try “mplayer2” or neutron star’s links.
I’ve found a lot of DVD’s include playing software. The one I’ve seen frequently is the Interactual player. Pretty good - although at times it seems to have problems with aspect ratios. It’s free, though.
Disney was putting it on their DVD’s for a while - I haven’t checked lately. The Interactual site suggests looking for a “PC Friendly” logo in the DVD.