Recently had crashing-freezing problems with win-xp home,friend fix comp.but installed win-xp pro. in it"s place.Compaq presario working good now but with a lot fewer programs,,,PROBLEM is-- when i insert dvd in dvd drive or a cd in cd drive windows media player comes on screen but never starts or plays dvd or cd, only displays progress hourglass! Please help!!!Did your friend remember to re-install all the drivers ? ?well, he works with computers for a living but sometimes things are missed. Should i have a program for dvd player like i had before xp pro was installed (win dvd)? Does windows media player NEED a driver DOWNLOADED for it or should it play media automatically?If so can an amature do it from the internet?lAlso, how do i find out if i have a driver installed for dvd-cd player?Will i need a seperate driver for the cd-drive such as itunes ect.?Thanks for any advice!!The optical drive does not need it's own drivers...however i have seen this happen when a PC's chipset drivers are missing/incorrectly installed.Can you tell me how to find out if drivers are there or not? Should i download a dvd program from web?Go to Control Panel/System/Device Manager...
Post back with the results...Went to device manager,dvd-cd drive properties says device is enabled and working properly.Has option to update drivers or uninstall, should i try either? What next?Insert a bootable DISK into the drive and reboot. Does the system recognize the drive at boot?inserted dvd into drive and rebooted,during shutdown received message -- windows media player cannot play dvd,compatible dvd player is not installed on this computer.DVD's are normal high quality movie's ,not burnt by anyone.Movie's that played on computer before xp-pro was installed. After reboot,dvd in drive was not reconized on screen. Checked under disc drives in my computer and showes that movie in in dvd drive ,but will not play when opened.when dvd drive is opened, it sayes that compatible dvd player is not installed on computer.First of all I said to use a BOOTABLE disk. Second, install some dvd player and see what happens.Am not computer savey as you can tell , so exactly what is a bootable disk? And what do you mean when you say install some dvd player?Okay. I was trying to find out if the dvd drive was working properly. By putting in a bootable disk (such as the XP CD) we would find out if the system sees the drive at boot (the system would boot directly to the XP CD). But based on you last post it sounds like you just need to install dvd player software. Let's start with free ones. VideoLan is excellent: http://www.videolan.org/. Or pick another: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS304US305&q=free+dvd+player+software

Either way, download and install one.Okay, thats what i thougt you meant about dvd player,but was'nt sure. I will try the one you suggested and go from there.Very FRUSTRATING when you are computer ignorant like i am! Slowly learning though. Thanks a lot for all of you guy's help. Will post again if more help needed. Thanks!