Thinkpads Forum

I'm cross country stealing a rogue wireless connection to ask a question. I'm visiting my sister, to whom I'd given my T30 when I got a T42 last year. (It's acting so weirdly, being unable to access her dialup account, that I'll probably fly it home to research the issues). She was surprised to learn that it had a DVD drive. This excited her because she had a couple DVD movies with no way to play them.

I first tried a movie on my T42 without incident; a program "DVD Express" (if memory serves) fired up and started to play it without incident.

On her T30, I couldn't find any similar program, so I tried Windows Media Player on the XP Pro machine. It plays the video, but not the audio. Interrogation of the settings on Media Player reveals that it thinks the T30 has no audio devices, and consequently all the audio settings are greyed out. There have not been audio issues in the past on this machine; Windows sounds go OK and device manager reports no issues with the various components of audio.

Any ideas?

Art

Install a dedicated DVD player.

EDIT: erroneously I gave the link to a (free) POS from cliprex. DO NOT INSTALL.
Apparently it is riddled with adware/spyware/trojans etc.
My apologies

Standard T30s come with InterVideo WinDVD. Unless it's been wiped, or a non-IBM version of XP has been loaded, it should be on that TP.

Corporate Symantec detects that this program contains an ad server and will now allow it to be saved to disk on the download.

No way!

Any other freeware choices for her?

Art

First of all, if you have DVD Express, then you have DVD playback on your Windows Media Player app, since they are related applications. When you put a DVD in her T30, does a screen come up asking which app to open it with? If so, choose Windows Media Player and see if that works, also make sure she has the most current vers of WMP. I also have that Intervideo WinDVD too, but I recently am using a new player called Core Player http://www.corecoded.com/ , which is freeware for everything, but if you want DVD playback it will cost you $9.95. It is a great player for all music and video though.

Alternately there is a freeware DVD player: http://www.tucows.com/preview/427178 that you can try.

I also downloaded the most current package of video/audio codecs (The Codecs 5.0) from www.theorica.net/codecs.htm, they might help out too.

Good luck

hmm, the link for the Codecs 5.0 seems to be dead.

goofyGAguy wrote:hmm, the link for the Codecs 5.0 seems to be dead.

sorry, I noticed that too; some websites don't want hyperlinking to their download links. If you type in that address though in your browser it will work.

VLC player: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

That's a great little player Gator, I just brought it down and used it for a short video of mine. Very nice and easy to use. I have quite a collection of media players now

VLC is the only player I use. It plays everything - no need to hunt and search for codecs.

That's great, I originally had to download more codecs when I used Windows Media Player, don't use that anymore - I was loving the Core Player but now I like the look and controls on this VLC better.

Hey Sri - aren't you supposed to be baking????

Ah, that experiment went bad. I created a chockenstien - on your guard people, the chocolate monster is out to get you ALL!

I just installed VLC after reading everyone's input, and it seems to be functioning correctly, sound and all.

The T30 was originally a Win 2000 machine, and doubtlessly the standard software disappeared after upgrading the hard drive, putting on XP Pro, etc, etc.

I'm sure this program will meet her needs. Thanks for all the great information and responses.

And I solved the SVCHOST 100% problem I alluded to in the original message - after hours of work it turned out to be the sporadically reported issue with Microsoft Update; when I returned the machine to the old Windows Update the problem vanished. (And I updated the last 8 months of updates, which with her dialup connection she finds to be an intolerable burden.)

Art