Thinkpads Forum

I have a ThinkPad 600X bought used, 327 Meg, 500 mHz. It came with a drive bay LG 8080B DVD-ROM drive. I'm trying to get that to work with a (working, new install) Win 98SE system.

Windows knows the drive is there -- Windows Explorer can see the files on the DVD and the device manager correctly identifies the drive. It says no driver loaded because none needed and that the device is working fine. I can eject a DVD under software control.

I THINK I have figured out that the IBM distribution software was MEDIAMATIC DVDExpress but that it was furnished ONLY with models that came equipped with a DVD player ex-factory. If you bought an aftermarket DVD player for your non-DVD machine, then the player software came with that. My machine is from EBay; it came with the DVD player and a Win98 factory restore CD ROM on which I find no trace of the necessary files, said to be in a folder IBMTOOLS/APPS. There was no DVD player software disk. When I START>PROGRAMS>ACCESSORIES>ENTERTAINMENT there is no DVD player listed.

When I put a (known good) DVD in the drive, the light flashes eleven times slowly then twice quickly. Nothing else happens. If I go to Windows Explorer and double click the name of the volume on device 'E' (C and D are partitions on the hard drive) the light on the drive flashes a bunch of times (consistent with reading and the drive spins) and Explorer shows me that there are two folders on the drive. Nothing else happens.

I have WMP 06.01.05.0217 installed -- I think that's what was on the IBM Win 98SE factory distribution. It works fine for other kinds of video, MPGs and such. I have just tried to install WMP 'Classic,' said to be capable of handling DVDs. The older one is still the one invoked if you open an MPG file and if I try to open 'Classic' via a shortcut, it crashes with a Visual Basic runtime message telling me that I need to contact the support team.

I'd do a shift-right click on E and try to 'open (a dvd) with' but for whatever reason Windows won't offer me that option -- those keystrokes give me only 'OPEN.' Evidently they know better than I do what software I want to use. Since I can't really open WMPC I can't look for an option there to make it my default player.

I have downloaded and probably installed the latest Microsoft DirectX's -- level 9 or something that, and here's an obscene gesture for you, Microsoft for making that so much fun. (The validation to prove that I'm running genuine MICROSOFT Windows 98 instead of one of the many illegal Win98 clones out there, crashes IE 5.6) But I did finally get it installed, I think. Ditto the K-Lite codecs -- the smallest of the three packages. Not sure that makes any difference.

I'm sure I am missing something here. Maybe more than one thing? Barking up only totally wrong trees? Any suggestions? Is it worth fooling with WMP Classic? It gets high marks from lots of people but I've never been able to get it to run.

Someone else may have something different to say, but I think you need to buy some DVD player software.

Consider Cyberlink PowerDVD. You should be able to get version 4 for not too much money. I used to use PowerDVD version 4 on a 600E running Windows 2000, and it worked pretty good. Be sure DMA is enabled on the drive when you get the software.

Waltah wrote:I'm sure I am missing something here. Maybe more than one thing? Barking up only totally wrong trees?

Go here and get the original ISO for the MediaMatics DVD Express and install it. It says it's for the 770, but the same ISO was also for the 600X.

Then get the upgrade from IBM/Lenovo.

Regards,

James

[quote="GomJabbar"] Consider Cyberlink PowerDVD.

Considered and ordered, for very little money.

I have also followed JHEM's suggestions to install MediaMatic's DVDExpress. I downloaded the main file; it will play MPG files but not the DVD. I may have something wrong and I haven't downloaded the update file yet -- that's next.

Meanwhile, I went around again with Windows Media Player Classic. Went back to the site and discovered I had made a very SO-FIS-TEE-KATED error ... namely, I had downloaded and tried to install the one for W2K/XP rather than Win 9X. With that technical challenge overcome, WMPC works well. The screen is a bit dark and there does not seem to be a brightness control. There's a very occasional jerk in the movement -- not enough to be an issue. If you pause the show, it resumes for an instant, then stops for a couple seconds, then goes on -- looks like an error in keeping buffers filled ahead of the action.

So something's working, the 500 mHz 600X is entirely adequate for full screen DVD viewing, and there are two more candidates that I plan to get up and running. Shootout report to follow!

THANKS!!!! This is a GREAT forum!

Try using K-Lite...it's free, has ALL the codecs and uses a small version of WMP.