Well, I thought this might amuse a few here...........

Equipment:

P4/1.7Ghz
nVidia Geforce 3 64Mb DDR
CTX PV720A LCD flatscreen
Windows 2000 SP4, fully patched
Latest BIOS

Problem:

Videos on DVD media won't play or play sound only, or play with a very dark image as if you were looking at colour print negatives? As far as I can tell the CD handling was working fine.

Nothing showing as a problem in device manager.

I try:

1. Check device manager for problems........................................... nope
2. Reinstall drivers for sound and video.......................................... nope
3. Install a variety of DVD and media players.................................. nope
4. Load codecs......................................................................... nope
5. Try variety of resolution and refresh rates.................................. nope
6. Download and install/re-install latest screen and vid card drivers.... nope

I finally go back to the video management package that I had tried before and either reset (confirmed) or changed various settings.

All of a sudden the damn thing works!.......... but I was so p1$$ed off with it; I did a whole load of stuff at once, and cannot determine what solved it

Having talked to the owners, I knew that the HDD had died and had been replaced. They had reinstalled and updated the OS (twice, on discovering the problem). They had (they say) loaded the latest drivers.

Very annoying that my own impatience got the better of, me, but, as I have never seen anything like this before, I suppose it doesn't really matter?

I would guess that one of the previous installs was corrupted?

Worst of all it was a "favour for a friend"