"sheppardwk" wrote in message
news
DVD's used to work on the PC.

I tried to play a DVD using the VLC player, but after 4 minutes the screen
elongated. About a minute later, 1/4 of the desktop was a blue screen
with
the player occupying the remaining 3/4 of the desktop. However, the
bottom
of the desktop was not visible - could not see the taskbar, Start button,
quick launch, etc. The screen then went blank a few minutes later, but
the
audio continued. I rebooted, turned off the screen saver and unplugged
the
internet connection and tried it again. One minute later, the screen went
blank.

I tried a DvDrip-aXXo (avi) file in my DivX Player - it worked perfectly.
This file caused the screen to go blank in both WMP and PowerDVD.

No other problems with the computer, no changes to virtual memory and no
indications in Device Manager.


OK, so the DVD's are probably not the standard mpeg2/VOB format,
but using the DivX compression technique, no doubt one of the issues
are lack of codecs, but you should get an error message to effect that
WMP/PowerDVD cannot play such file types etc or similar?
Start he
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...faq/codec.mspx

This is the most uptodate DivX codec pack (at top of page)
It claims compatibility with all media players. Including WMP 6 and above.
http://www.divxmovies.com/software/
Download and install it.

This is the DivX FAQ.
Section 4.2 details a link to a program: DivFix
I've no idea if file corruption maybe the cause of the frozen PC etc.
But you may like to try it to fix any possible corruption.
http://www.divxmovies.com/faq/#4.2