Help, my dvd decoder is gone

My system (which I built myself) has been working fine, but all the sudden it decided that I didn't have a dvd decoder installed and I cannot play dvd's anymore. I am doing nothing that I haven't done at least 100 times before now and I know of nothing that has changed or happened to my system that would cause this. When I built the PC, I don't remember doing anything special to make it play DVDs. My DVD burner manual says that with windows XP, I don't have to do anything to make it act as a DVD ROM. My computer still recognizes my DVD burner and I can go to it in windows explorer. In the past, I have played DVDs with windows media player 9. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Abit NF7 Mobo
AMD XP 2500 Barton core
lite-on dvdRW SOHW-812s
Windows XP Home - SP2

 

I'll try to make this as simple as I can.

Video decoders are complicated unfortunately.

Because they are licenced, there are heaps of different ones as everyone is trying to make money, so it really depends on what the video was coded with as to what you need.

Windows Media Player does not include certain MPEG codecs required for DVD as they are licenced and Micro$$oft is too cheap to pay for them.

If you got a software DVD player with your DVD drive (like PowerDVD or WinDVD for example) and you install that, then media player will use that programs codec/s.

Try downloading Micro$$oft Windows Media Player Codec Package and see if that helps.

Whether it works now or not, sooner or later you will come across a video for which you don't have the required codec.

Rather than installing various codec packages you come across, which is the worst thing you can do, get G-Spot and Video Inspector from HERE, and they will tell you which codec is required and a link to download it from.

Also, in Windows Media Player, in Tools, Options, and then the Player tab, make sure you check "download codec automatically" so it at least tries to find the codec for you as well.

 

did you buy your drive retail because i have that same drive and it came with power dvd disk, did you pay for a decoder to use with windows i know that is one option, or you could check out this sitehttp://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/freeware.html or http://www.tucows.com/ i think i have seen a free one on both of these

 

Thanks all, the fix was as simple as uninstalling and reinstalling power dvd.