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  • Keep your PC's internals and externals in tiptop shape by following the sage advice of Contributing Editor Kirk Steers.
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Hardware Tips: Jog Your Memory for Faster PC Performance

Kirk Steers

Will It Play in Peoria?

I bought my PC a year ago, and the DVD drive worked fine until I tried to play a DVD movie sent to me by a friend who lives in Britain. I've been told that DVD movies are restricted to geographic regions, and that I have to reset my DVD drive to accept DVDs from Britain, but I can't find any documentation on how to do this. Can you help?

David Busch, Yonkers, New York

You can probably get your friend's DVD to play on your system, but doing so may require considerable effort. DVD players and DVD movie discs are set with a regional code for copy protection and distribution control. The code is intended to prevent a DVD player sold in one region of the world from playing a DVD disc sold in a different region.

Look on the DVD for a small globe with a number in it. The number for the European region is 2, and the number for the United States and Canada is 1. If it says 'ALL', the DVD is playable in any region.

On many DVD drives you can select the region code, but it's not easy; you'll probably have to reinstall your drive. Check with the manufacturer.

Most drives let you select the region code at installation. This may be as easy as deleting the DVD drive in Device Manager, rebooting, and reinstalling the driver, but there's a catch: Most drives let you reset the region only a handful of times--typically from five to nine resets. If you need to change regions after the drive has reached its maximum number of resets, you'll have to return it to the manufacturer for service.

A number of hacks are available on the Internet for disabling the regional code in a DVD player's firmware, but be warned: Using one of these will likely invalidate your DVD player's warranty.

Hardware Tips welcomes your tips and questions and pays $50 for published items. Kirk Steers is a PC World contributing editor.
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