..oh the dvd rom drive

[melmay04]

i'm an absolutely frazzled technical bam obviously needin help, - please,
....i cannot get dvd to play and am unsure if the problem lies with the
hardware or because i installed a thing called a codec (divx) on february,
which i now cant seem to uninstall because error message says i'm not system
administrator - even tho i know that i am!..bear with me.....so i tried to do
that system restore thing but can't seem to get it to go back to february,
(last restore point only goes back bout 3 wks)...okay..so..i think what i
wanna ask is (1) how do i know if it is actually a hardware problem or
not...(2) can i restore way back in time even if the date isn't listed?....oh
and i checked in the bit saying device manager and it said working fine and
also went into a 'regedit' bit looking for thing called upper and lower
filters (found that on another site) and (3) can you help me, i have read
absolutely ever wee thread, well nearly all, in this bit and in the update
discussion bit for hours now and the only thing i am sure of is that it isn't
a driver problem...i think because i didn't have the option to roll it
back...somebody?...anybody?

 

[melmay04]

okay, 3hours later and i have managed to delete the software divx, only had
to turn off the user accounts, but it's not made any difference, dvd rw drive
still not working and when i click on it with the disc in it just ejects and
says insert a disc when there was already one in it. (and i really don't
think the upper and lower filter had anything to do with the problem because
it's always been a vista.)