It reports the installed MPEG-2 decoders as:

Sonic Cinemaster Video Decoder 4.1 CinemasterVideo.dll v 4.1.1.0
CyberLink Video/SP Decoder DELL 5.3 CLVSD.ax v 6.0.0.2314

Thank you. When I have time, and the laptop back here, I'll follow up.

Replying to myself to update this.

First a slight digression.

Found at church this morning that the laptop wouldn't drive an external monitor (projector) at the same time as the laptop's screen. As I'd anticipated possible problems I'd taken my own laptop which I knew worked OK.

So I brought the church laptop back home lunchtime to sort it. The problem was caused by me not installing the specific video driver. As Windows had installed a working video driver I'd thought that was all OK. When I installed the correct one the external monitor sprung into life simultaneous with the laptop screen.

I then decided to progress the non-playing DVD issue. I put a (commercial) DVD in - and it played perfectly straight away. I tried a home-made DVD, also played fine. So I tried the (commercial) DVD that I'd used previously to test the laptop, that played fine.

I have to assume therefore that the DVD was playing but the absence of the correct video driver meant the laptop couldn't process the DVD video data properly and hung up.

Ah well, another lesson learned

Thanks for that too - I tried using the Dell Updater software, but it did literally nothing...

in my case I had to:

* run the latest drivers for the D610 from the dell web site
* look for the latest drivers for a similar dell D630 / D6xx and then install the later drivers. Once done all burst into like.


then 2-3 days later the D610 expired and went for recycling. I blamed it on the dog to the other 1/2... Now looking for a new laptop