DVD Lock ups

[Mortanis]

This isn't a specific Sage problem, as it affects DVD's through other programs, but it's on my PVR machine and you guys are well versed in that.

The problem: ANY DVD will lock whatever program is running it after choosing any option from the menu screen. In Sage, I will Play DVD, it will load, go through all the legal screens and any promo's on the disk, and load the menu screen. If I choose any option, the video either freezes or blanks out to black, then the program locks up. This problem also happens if I play the DVD through Windows Media Player. In both instances, once the program is locked up, that program will not run again until I manually kill the process. I.E. Windows Media Player locks up... I close it but the process remains running, but it won't load again until I kill the process.

Worse, this was all working until last thursday.

This is frustrating to say the least. Freshly formatted machine as of last tuesday. Installed windows XP, patched up to SP2 + all security updates, installed Java, installed drivers for cards, installed drivers for video card and NForce mobo, then Sage, and that's it. I did have DVD visual playback originally, the "reinstall direct X" problem. I swapped out the quartz.dll from the 1.2meg to the 1.8meg in safe mode, and fixed that problem. Until this new problem last thursday.

I could really use some idea's on what to try. As noted, this isn't just a problem with sage. Nor is it a problem with the drive, as I tried the disks in my DVD burner to the same result.

Stats in sig. Many thanks.

[Mortanis]

Well, it looks like i have *this* problem fixed. Nero was the culprit. I'd forgotten i'd installed the bundle that came with my burner drive, and it had some background service DLL's hosing everything.

Removing that, I can play my backuped DVD's... my original DVD's, however, now give me a copy protection error in Windows media player and refuse to load at all in Sage. Following the error online through Microsoft's site simply says that they have no idea what causes the error and that they are looking into it.

Looks like I'm not going to be watching any DVD's for a while. Any ideas are appreciated.

EDIT: come to think of it, I dont' think I played any non backup disks before the problem occured.... I bet I just need a decoder installed. Gonna dig out my WinDVD disks and see if that fixes it.

[spockware]

I also got lockups on DVDs in Sage. They happened when I had Sage set to use VMR9 for DVD playback. I use Overlay now and it is 90%. My decoder is Sonic Cinemaster. Try goofing with Sage settings, I guess.