"BillW50" wrote in message
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In ,
Jo-Anne wrote:
"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
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"BillW50" wrote in message
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In ,
Jo-Anne wrote:
"BillW50" wrote in message
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In ,
Jo-Anne wrote:
I recently started playing DVDs on my WinXP laptop. Each time I
put a DVD in the drive, it opens with PowerDVD. Since I like to
use VLC Media Player, I close the PowerDVD window, open VLC
Media Player, and click on the DVD drive. I'm sure there's a way
to set VLC as the default DVD player. I'd be grateful for
instructions on how to do this or even for a link to a website
that explains it. Thank you!

Jo-Anne

I am not 100% positive this will work, but it is worth a shot.
There is a program called "USB Safely Remove". And one of the
things it can do is to run a program when it detects a given
device. "USB Safely Remove" is handy for much more than this too,
so it is worth looking into even if you can't get this to work
for this purpose. http://safelyremove.com/

Thank you, Bill! I had already bookmarked USB Safely Remove (I
think from one of your earlier posts). I'll definitely check it
out for this issue--although I wonder how it reacts if the media
in the DVD player is simply a data CD/DVD.

Jo-Anne

Just curious, have you ever tried to change under Explorer (file
manager) under Tools-Folder Options and select the third tab
called File Types? Here the third one down is called DVD Video.
Select this one and press the Advanced button. It should list
something like this: Play
Play with PowerDVD (in bold)
Play with VLC media player

Select the VLC one. Then press the Set Default button (now this one
should be in bold). That should now open DVD movies with VLC
instead of PowerDVD.

Hi, Bill,

I set VLC as the default, but PowerDVD still came up. I restarted the
computer; PowerDVD still came up. I deleted PowerDVD from the
"list." It no longer comes up--but VLC doesn't either. I have to
open VLC, click on Open Disc, and click Open. This is all on a DVD I
had run earlier. So I tried a new DVD, and it makes a strange sound
spinning, doesn't stop spinning, and VLC isn' working at all with
it. I inserted one of the DVDs I had run before, and it works
OK--although I still have to open VLC and manually start it.

From what I can see, this SHOULD have worked. I can't understand why
it hasn't--and I don't know what to do about the DVD that won't run
at all. Thank you for the suggestion, though!

Jo-Anne

Addendum: I did finally get the new DVD to play. I don't know what
went wrong the first time. So the only issue is having to start VLC
rather than having it automatically play the DVDs.

Jo-Anne

Try this, Win+R and paste in this line (including quotes):

"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --started-from-file dvd://d:

The last part "d:" change to whatever your drive letter is for your DVD
drive. In this example it is drive D. And that should start VLC and play
the DVD. If that works and it should if your path for VLC is the same, let
me know and we will go on from there.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo 1.83G - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

Thank you, Bill! I'll copy this post to my hard drive for future reference.
As it turns out, your earlier instruction on how to set up Autoplay for the
DVD drive (right-clicking on the drive, etc.) worked perfectly.

Jo-Anne