I installed a new optical drive in my Brother-in-Laws PC last night.
Everything went fine for the installation but when it came to testing it no audio would work from DVDs. Playing CDs was fine, playing audio from the hard drive was fine, but playing a region 2 DVD would only display the image with no audio what-so-ever.
Can anyone shed any light on what the problem might be?

Mark

Did you try different movies? One thing I could think of is if you have a movie where DTS audio is the default audio for the movie (kinda rare, haven't seen many like this). Some sound cards don't support DTS, so unless you go into the movies audio menu and change to Dolby 2.0 or 5.1, you won't get any sound.

Also, I'm assuming you have sound for other things? Can you play music and/or hear other sounds in Windows? Make sure you don't have your sound muted in Windows or something. If your computers audio is working in every other way, don't know why it wouldn't play a movie. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the firmware of your drive. Pop an audio CD into the drive, does it work?

You need to post more info about your hardware before anyone could tell if you could have some compatibility issue. What's your sound card? Again, does it work besides movies? Which shuttle board are you talking about? etc Go to control panel-->system-->hardware-->device manager. Do you see any devices sticking out with a yellow question mark or red x (this could indicate a device conflict, or lack of driver or corruption of the driver).

Yes. We tried a music DVD as well as a standard film as well as a TV show disc, all with the same result; visual but no audio.Yep, as I said above, all other audio is working fine. Music previously ripped to the hard drive - works, windows alert sounds - work, playing a CD in the drive - works, playing YouTube - works.This was the first thing I did after trying other discs and audio sources. Everything is flagged as working normally.
It's all very puzzling.

The machine is a Dell Optiplex GX 260 running a fully up-to-date XP SP3. I can't remember the make/model of drive I put in.

Mark

Um, do you have the K-Lite codec pack installed?

If you don't, it's still worth a shot.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm

You need to install the correct codecs.
Windows XP doesn't come with DVD support built in so won't support AC3 or the like.

Okay. Cool. So, where do I get them from?
Bish, thanks for that, I'll give it a go and report back.

Mark

Download this too.
http://ac3filter.sourceforge.net/ac3filter_eng.html

With those 2 packs, K-LITE and AC3, you should be hunky-dory!

Report back, and tell us the outcome!

Will do! Thanks ever so much for the help.

Mark

Just installing VLC might be easier, seems to do everything and play files 'other players can't reach.

Well technically. If he does that, then he'd only be able to play in VLC. With the 2 codec packs, he'd be able to run in any program he likes.

Installing VLC is just putting a plaster on a wound, downloading the packs saspro and I gave him, is like, stitching up the wound. Metaphorically.

+1,

i have used this for a long time and always worked for me as every option codec wise is there....
http://cccp-project.net/
cheers spunky

That is a good pack. Has the mkv codecs in it.

I'm just still waiting to hear if it actually IS a codec error?

You know it's a codec problem,