"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
...
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.

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


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