Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because there is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder, and video card. Try installing an updated driver for your video card.

JohnD support operators suggestion works great. The trick is to find the correct driver to uninstall. Click the START button in search for program type update device drivers. Go to dvd/cd-rom drivers then go to your dvd device which for me is HL-DT-ST-DVD+-rw GA31n ATA device uninstall it restart your computer then reinstall the device driver for your device and that should fix any corrupt data for the copy write protection.

This is another example of Digital Rights Management (DRM) and similar anti-piracy tactics hurting paying customers. I recently reinstalled Windows on an 8 year old Gateway and just ran into this problem with Windows Media Player. VLC also doesn't want to play my store-bought DVDs. I remembered that I originally had to purchase WinDVD so that I could watch movies; it contained the necessary codec. Unfortunately, when I tried to reactivate WinDVD, I ran into a series of brick walls. Another

Then I remembered that a later purchase of Roxio Easy Media Creator 8.0 also contained a DVD codec. I'd already reinstalled Roxio and fired up its DVD player. Lo and behold I was able to play DVD's on it. But I still can't play them on Windows Media Player or VLC.

I don't know what exactly caused these problems, but it seems to be related to more DRM madness. I recognize the need for these companies to protect their intellectual property, but it so often seems that the last people whose needs are taken into account are legitimate customers.

For those wanting to jump on the Blame microsoft wagon, i just wanted to tell you this:

        I got that error tonight. on a dvd drive i always use. I looked to this after trying the video driver update and it not working. But put the disc straight from the dvd drive to the dvd burner i usually only use for burning and the disc started no problems. I'd say it's a hardware or driver issue with the drive not WMP. not that i always love microsoft we have our fights, and IE is a joke but nothing is perfect.

Now that's rather interesting.

The fact that a newer drive didn't have the same problems suggests, to me, that the WMP update deleted something in the registry which linked to my two drives so that it no longer recognized them as legitimate drives (or maybe, as suggested, found the virtual drive and decided something untoward was happening so the copy protection kicked in.

Personally I have given up on WMP all together. VLC is far better and free.

Microsoft isn't gaining any fans here when a simple update (and often done automatically via windows update) causes such problems.

A failing drive isn't my problem as they both work fine with several other programs so it must be the WMP update as one day it was fine, got the update, no longer working and no other adjustments etc made.

Of course, as usual, switching to an earlier version won't undo the changes made.

No wonder Microsoft is getting such a bad press. I've already had various problems with IE upgrades and other programs not being compatible with them (I've stuck to IE6 and I'm not moving - especially as I now use Firefox which I find far better).

Come on Microsoft, get it together.