Can only play region 1 on my laptop because I only had a certain amount of region changes and now its stuck?

Question

Unbeknown to me I could only change the region on my DVD player on my laptop a limited amount of times. Now its stuck on a region of which I have hardly any DVDs. Have tried loads of things. Any idea how I could get it to play normal region DVDs?

Answer 1

Your DVD player is not region free.



Direct quote from the above link.

"Making your DVD-ROM drive region-free is probably the hardest thing you'll have to do, in order to make your PC-DVD system region-free.

Not all DVD-ROM drives can be made region-free, so don't be alarmed if you can't make your DVD-ROM drive region-free (there may be other ways to playback DVD movies in other regions). But if you can make your drive region-free, then you should, since it will save you a lot of trouble.

To make DVD-ROM drives region-free, you'll have to use a region-free patched firmware to replace the current firmware in your DVD-ROM drive. Please remember that firmwares are the very important piece of software that controls how your DVD-ROM drive operates, and that firmware designed for one drive will almost never work on a firmware designed for another drive (unless the drives share the same basic design, eg. some Aopen and some Pioneer drives). Also, updating the firmware can be dangerous if you don't know what you are doing, as a bad firmware flash can permanently ruin your drive (not to mention void your warrantee at the same time).

For the lastest region free firmwares and tools, please refer to The Firmware Page. Each firmware will have different uploading/flashing instructions, so please read the included documentations very carefully.

After you have applied the region-free firmware, you should use the instructions outlined on this page, to see if your DVD-ROM drive is now region-free or not (ie. whether the firmware has worked, or not). You should also let Windows re-install and re-detect your DVD-ROM drivers and also re-install your software DVD player (more instructions below).

If your DVD-ROM drive is not listed on either of these pages, or is listed as having an RPC-2 (region-locking) firmware only, then you may want to try to rip the DVD to your hard-drive, strip out the region information in the process (to make the ripped movie region-free), and then playback the movie on your hard-drive. For more information, please refer to RipHelp's DVD Ripping Guide (use the "Rip the Entire DVD" section).

So to sum up, this is what you have to do :

Locate a region-free firmware for your DVD-ROM drive :
Click here to visit The Firmware Page

If a region-free firmware is available for your drive, apply it :

After you flash your drive with the new region-free firmware, make sure that it has worked by detecting the region status of your drive.

If the firmware hasn't worked, try again. If it has worked, you'll now need to let Windows re-install your DVD-ROM drivers (not always needed). You can do this by Click on the "Start" button -> "Settings" -> "Control Panel" -> "System" -> "Device Manager" -> "CDROM" -> delete/remove the item associated with your DVD-ROM drive. Restart your computer (Windows will now automatically re-detect your DVD-ROM drive - you may need your Windows setup files/CD).

You may also want to re-install your software DVD player.

If there is no region-free firmware for your drive, then you may want to "Rip the Entire DVD" and "Strip out the region code" while ripping :
Click here to view RipHelp's DVD Ripping Guide

You should already know the difference between a hardware DVD player (ie. a hardware decoder card, like the Creative DXR-3 or RealMagic Hollywood+) and a software DVD player (eg. PowerDVD or WinDVD), but in case you don't :

A hardware DVD player will usually be a PCI card, and has outputs on the back of the card/your computer for connection to your TV/external sound system.

A software DVD player, on the other hand, depends on your available hardware (eg. CPU, Video/Sound card).

For more information on this, and other PC-DVD related issues, please consult The PC-DVD Guide

Once you know what kind of DVD player you have, please use the links below to proceed

Making your software DVD player region free is actually quite easy. While strictly speaking, most of the tools below aren't really making your software DVD player region free, but rather, giving you the ability to change the region settings of these players without decreasing the region-change counter, effectively allowing to change the region settings of the software DVD player for an unlimited number of times. Please note that your DVD-ROM drive will need to be region-free before any of the tools below will work.

If you are using ATI Select or DVD Genie, what you should do is that everytime you want to play a DVD movie, first check which region it is from, and then go into ATI Select/DVD Genie to change the region setting of your software DVD player to match the region of the movie. Do this everytime you play a DVD that doesn't match your player's current region settings, and you should be able to do this for an unlimited number of times (hence, become region-free).

Below are a list of the most popular software DVD players, and the tools you will need to use to make them region-free (or change their region settings for an unlimited number of times) : "

Good Luck.

Answer 2

if its stuck at region 1 then you can play dvd's that are sold in the US, if your out of changes well your stuck. buy a region free dvd player

edit: you cant change the regions by using software its the firmware for the drive that controls it.

Answer 3

Have you tried Region Free tools for the PC?
You should try DVD Genie 4.10, from the download section
http://www.doom9.org

Answer 4

De-install and Re-install the DVD playing software.

Answer 5

try and get Region Free tool from doom9 or 9down /download.com most are free

Answer 6

I got a free laptop from this site, I highly recommend it!