How to fix Window Media Player "Cannot Play This DVD" error message

Posted on September 26, 2007 at 12:38 pm

Make sure to read other posts from the Video Codecs series!

How to fix Window Media Player "Cannot Play This DVD" error message
CodecInstaller – Find and download audio and video codecs to play movies

Isn’t it great how even in our modern computer age with Windows XP and Windows Vista, you can still receive an error like “windows media player cannot play this dvd because there is problem with digital copy protection” when you’re trying to watch a regular DVD from Blockbuster or Netflix on your computer! It’s really a pain in the butt that something like that doesn’t just “work” considering it’s VERY COMMON for people to watch DVDs on their computers!

Anyway, this happened to me last night and it took me about 20 minutes to fix the problem, so I thought I would write up how I ended up fixing the problem! Hopefully, you read this before thinking it’s some problem with Windows or with your DVD drive, etc as I have seen some people re-install Windows or get a new DVD drive because of this error!

Actually, the problem all comes down to something called Codecs. Codecs are small pieces of software that can decode the material on a DVD. Whenever a DVD is created, especially new one with copyright protection software installed on them, the content of the DVD is encoded using algorithms into a special format. This encoded data cannot be played on your computer in it’s normal format, so it has to be DECODED on your computer before it plays.

You may have hear of Divx, which is a codec that allows people to compress full-length DVDs onto a CD without losing much of it’s original image quality. Some software DVD players will auto-download the required codecs for you and hence you won’t have this problem, but for some reason Windows Media Players sucks at this and will pop up with the error message.

You can download all of the codecs for just about any type of video format by going to Free-Codecs.net and downloading the XP Codec Pack and the K-Lite Codec Pack. You’ll see them both listed under Codec Packs in the left hand menu.

You’ll also see one called Codec Pack All in 1, which may sound better, but it actually didn’t work for me! Not really sure why, but the once I installed the other two packs and restarted my computer, my DVD played just fine!

You might find some other solutions on Microsoft’s site, such as restarting your computer or taking the disk out and putting it back in, but those are obviously NOT going to work! I’m not sure why there own knowledge base article on this issue does not even mention codecs!

Hope it fixes someone’s problem! Enjoy!

[tags]codecs, window media player, cannot play dvd, wmp error, play dvds[/tags]

» Filed Under Computer Tips

Comments

15 Responses to “How to fix Window Media Player "Cannot Play This DVD" error message”

Madhur Kapoor said on : September 27th, 2007 at 8:14 am

Cool Tip buddy .

Scott N. said on : May 21st, 2008 at 9:37 pm

THANK YOU SO MUCH! EVERY OTHER SITE WAS TELLING ME TO DO ALL THIS COMPLICATED SHIT LIKE BUYING THINGS! THANK YOU

alex said on : September 10th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

dude tahnk u sooo much!!! i freakin hate windows but at least the codec packs let me play freakin dvds lol. i agree with scott. free ones are hard 2 find 2.

yolanda mcneal said on : October 7th, 2008 at 3:36 pm

get error message C00D0FEA when ripping a CD on media player 11

John said on : March 8th, 2009 at 1:14 pm

Thanks so much!!! I knew I could just Google and trust someone else’s advice over Microsoft’s website.

Jamie said on : July 22nd, 2009 at 7:22 pm

Thanks for your help!!!! I installed the codes from the site you suggested and my Netflix movie started to play right away! No more “I’m stupid MS and don’t know what to do message,” Thanks again =)

JS

Jon Campbell said on : August 28th, 2009 at 1:38 am

Thank you for the information. Like you, I am pinching myself in disbelief that I must download software from .cz to enable Windows to display standard DVDs.

Raks said on : September 13th, 2009 at 9:01 pm

Thank you for sharing!! I wish I would have read this post before spending so much time trying to change the settings on my computer (then finally giving up)!! Now I can play all my DVDs in WMP!

Dan said on : September 21st, 2009 at 6:46 pm

For me, XP Codec pack was all that required for the DVD to show. Thanks for the tip!

oleh said on : November 30th, 2009 at 4:41 pm

I have a brand new Toshiba machine and it will not play any DVD! I’m guessing because the appropriate decoder is not installed. I had tried to contact Toshiba, but they did not help me. Thanks for your help!

david said on : December 14th, 2009 at 11:15 pm

my new toshiba will not play dvds. Are there any free downloads for media players that will work?

Maya said on : December 25th, 2009 at 10:24 am

Excellent!
the installement of K-Lite Codec Pack fixed my problem just by installing it. didn`t have to do anything else. I fixed two laptops with it! I have several avi files on an external hardd disc and can now watch on my laptop anywhere
Thank you so much!!!

Thomas said on : January 5th, 2010 at 12:43 am

Thank you! That works well! Now I can play DVDs again in WMP!

Stu said on : January 27th, 2010 at 7:52 pm

At last it works. I only needed the xp codec pack to play dvds.

Thanks for a solution to what had been a vexing problem.

cheers

Stu

How to fix Window Media Player “Cannot Play This… : Daily Vista News Says:

[...] ShareMonster.org wrote an interesting article today about Here’s a quick quote Copyright Feed Content – OnlineTechTips – Aseem Kishore 18254532AKMK Isn’t it great how even in our computer modern age with Windows XP and Windows Vista, you can still receive an error like “windows media player cannot play this dvd because … with Windows or with your DVD drive, etc as I have seen some people re-install Windows or get a new Posted in Computer Tips From A Computer Guy ( 196 links from 149 sites) [...]
September 26th, 2007 at 1:04 pm