scarey

howdy,

friend bought a HP DV5000 laptop in America and it only plays region 1 DVDs.

is there any software - preferably free - that would solve this, or is it get another dvd drive?

I'm abit confused cos I have an compaq 6510b (with hp badge) sourced from US and it plays everything fine.

thanks in advance

scarey

Markus

I'd get over to here and have a look at the utilities they have. My first thought would be to use the DiscInfo application to view information about the DVD drive in the machine.

Once you know exactly what make and model of drive you have, you can then search on the forums to see if the drive can have the region encoding removed and if it can, you may be able to find firmware that you flash to the drive to make it region free.

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

Go into computer Management
Disk Management
Right Click the DVD drive and choose properties
There will be a tab for DVD region
change it to the correct one (Region 2, pick United Kingdom and Region 2 will be chosen)

You can usually only do this 4 times max.

scarey

Hi Kieran,

sorry if this is a daft question, but will that change have to be done for each dvd that isnt region 1 or just once?

thanks

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

You can only do so 4 times in total.... so you really should only use one regions DVDs on the laptop

jpor

iTrader: (1)

You can flash your drive with a RPC-1 fix. The idea will be to get hold of the next firmware upgrade for your drive and using a program re-code features into it such as making the drive region free. Try here:

The Firmware Page • Portal

jono300

iTrader: (8)

Installed a small programme on my sons new laptop for this very purpose, sure it was called " anydvd " ?? could be worh a look around the usual places ??!!

p.s works a treat !!