Need real computer geek help...

[GremlinX]

6 year old SONY(never buy a Sony Laptop) laptop. Its has a DVD player. I got a new laptop and gave this to my wife for her to use when she isnt on her home pc. So.... It has always played DVD's . She needs to be able to watch dvds for work out of town. So we popped one in. Nothing. Error codes for decoders. So I updated the version of WMP... no workie. So finally, I bought a $14 program online to make it decode(why? Its always played DVD's, what's changed???). Now it plays her damned stupid work dvd's, but no other regular dvd movies... I give. I hate computers.What can I do? The laptop cant go uploading these giant super whamperdyne players... as it's C drive is just about full, and the D drive 3/4 full of stuff she needs to keep on it. Yes, it has a partitioned drive. This is BS that I have a laptop that plays DVD's and yet you have to buy more programs to use... Vent over... what can I do??? Help...

[GremlinX]

PS, this is only service pak1...should I get 2?

[Diablo2006]

i'd recommending either:

RE-installing windows with a friends Windows XP disc and using the XP serial key on the bottom of the laptop

or

Using system restore to restore the laptop to an earlier time such as 1 month ago.

I know that reinstalling windows will fix this as i have had it happen before, i used system restore because the day before it all worked perfectly so i "system restored" it to the day before.

Yes, deffinatly update to service pack 2 and obviously use virus and adware scanners regularly

[GremlinX]

The restore's earliest date was this morning... dont know whats up with that.... This is frustrating. I do not have a cd burner on here, so all this data will be lost... Bla..

[steven]

just buy the new apple mac book pro . jo can run windows xp on it since they are running on the intel processors. i have been running on mac for about 8 years and only had 1 crash.

i use them in my music studio and for viseo editing.
check out apple.com for all the details , thepricing isnt bad either

regards
steve

[Diablo2006]

Gremlin, buy an extrenal hard disk drive. Put all the files you and you wife needs such as pictures on there, reinstall windows and then simply cut and paste all the files from the extrenal hard drive back on. extrernal Hard disks are cheap aswell, cheaper than a mac anyway.