Question

DVD's play sound but no video?

Asked by: eric1508

I have a clients Compaq laptop that is running Windows XP SP2 with a DVD-Rom drive.  Their problem is that their DVD's will play and you can hear the sound but there's no video.  There's just a black screen where the video should be playing.  I've tried many differnet DVD playing software (including a version of Win DVD that always works for me on many different PC's).  I've tried un-installing and re-installing the graphics drivers, downloading different codec packs, etc...  I've even tried re-intalling directx 9c and turning down hardware acceleration and nothing has worked yet.  Let me know what you think.  Eric.

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Asked On
2008-03-20 at 17:20:25ID23258835
Tags

Microsoft

,

Windows XP

,

SP2

,

video

,

dvd

Topics

Windows XP Operating System

,

DVD Players & Recorders

,

Personal Computers

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
14

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Answers

 

by: CallandorPosted on 2008-03-20 at 17:28:05ID: 21177142

This is likely a missing codec - download VLC and test if that will play, as it has the capability to play most dvds: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

 

by: burrcmPosted on 2008-03-20 at 17:36:19ID: 21177159

Could be the laptop screen is not the primary display. External should automatically disable if not connected, but maybe not. Have a look in video settings and set it as primary if it isn't.

Chris B

 

by: burrcmPosted on 2008-03-20 at 17:36:56ID: 21177166

Plug an external in and see if it displays on that...

Chris B

 

by: eric1508Posted on 2008-03-20 at 17:39:56ID: 21177179

I've already tried VLC and it did the same thing and I've already checked and their is no secondary display setup.  Eric.

 

by: eric1508Posted on 2008-03-20 at 17:40:45ID: 21177184

I'll try that burrcm.  Eric.

 

by: RamiasOHGPosted on 2008-03-20 at 17:45:28ID: 21177201

 

by: eric1508Posted on 2008-03-20 at 17:49:51ID: 21177238

So far no luck with adding external monitor.  One thing to note, for some reason when I change any display settings I have to restart to have them take effect.  I know this used to happen with Windows 98 and such but I haven't seen this with XP before.  So I didn't know if this might be telling of a graphics issue.  I'll check out gspot.  Eric.

 

by: eric1508Posted on 2008-03-20 at 17:59:29ID: 21177304

One other thing to note, when I first looked at it I checked the Device Manager and noticed that there was a driver with the yellow exclamation mark on it under display adapters.  It was odd because the two that were supposed to be there (945GM Express Chipset Family) were there and installed just fine.  But another Intel based integrated graphics chip was installed.  I don't remember what it was but it looked like a completely different card.  So I uninstalled it and then had Device Manager search for new hardware and it didn't find anything.  I then went ahead and uninstalled and re-installed the correct display adapter to be safe.  Just an odd note.  Eric.

 

by: eric1508Posted on 2008-03-20 at 18:27:28ID: 21177394

Here's gspot's output...

 

by: windows_eXPertPosted on 2008-03-20 at 21:02:38ID: 21178058

Well there's your problem.

For god knows what reason, it's building a graph from the demuxer to the MPEG2 video decode to the .......... DivX encoder!

In plain english, it's trying (for some reason) to encode your output as a DivX. I'd get rid of DivX entirely, if it were me. If you need it, look up something called XviD, it's the same but smaller and better...

In any case, remove DivX temporarily and see if it fixes it. Under no circumstances should DirectShow be trying to talk to it for a DVD movie...

 

by: eric1508Posted on 2008-03-23 at 05:33:27ID: 21189370

Well I tried everything stated here and elsewhere and nothing changed a thing.  Because of time constraints I just went ahead and reformatted the thing and put a fresh install of Windows XP on the laptop which fixed the problem.  So I don't know what it was exactly but it's a closed issue for me.  Eric.

 

by: eric1508Posted on 2008-03-23 at 05:35:27ID: 21189376

Because this is a common issue and many of these solutions would work for some of the occurrences I am going to accept the answers that I think would fix the problem some of the time.  Eric.

 

by: eric1508Posted on 2008-03-23 at 05:37:51ID: 31441695

These didn't solve my issue but from a lot of web research they should solve similar problems for others.  Thanks again, Eric.

 

by: windows_eXPertPosted on 2008-03-23 at 10:32:00ID: 21190164

VLC uses it's own codecs independent of other software.

If that didn't fix it, it wasn't a codec issue. I'd suspect a graphics card / driver problem in that case.

Glad you got it fixed anyway, but sorry it took a reformat...

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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