A friend of mine recently bought a refurbished lap top. When attempting to use the DVD ROM, a message comes up:

"Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because a compatible DVD decoder is not installed on your computer."

So are we looking at hardware or is this a software installation??? If so, what & where could we find it???

DVDs have codes on them and in order to turn the data into graphics on your screen you need a decoder. Older computers use hardware decoders because the processors were not fast enough for software decoding. If you need hardware then you will need to buy a DVD decoder card which is a PCMCIA card and runs around $65.00 HP DVD-to-GO Graphics Card

However, it's possible you just need a software decoder. Windows Media Player does not contain a software DVD decoder but other applications like PowerDVD and WinDVD do.

I am currently using Windows Media Player ver. 10.00.00.4036 on my laptop with WinXP Pro SP2 and just tried playing a DVD through it & it seems to be working... Another possiblity is to insert a Disney DVD... most of them come with a free version of InterActual Player... not the greatest player, but, it beats having to pay for one...