I cannot play VCD's on my Windows 2000 machine. I was using Media Player 6.x and have since upgraded to 7.x. It tells me the format is unrecognized.

I am able to play the VCD on a Windows 95 PC with Media Player.

Anyone seen anything similar or can offer a suggestion?

Thanks

-- Jim Slade (fattyfatty2by4@hotmail.com), April 29, 2002

Answers

Go into the film structure on the CD, and open the folder called MPEGAV, there you will see a file called in some cases MUSIC01.DAT or AVESQ.DAT, what ever it is, right click on it, and select 'Open With', then select the Media Player you have, it should work fine from then on in...

Good luck...

-- The Boss (TheBoss@CherryDVD.co.uk), May 02, 2002.

I have had the exact same problem and tried the solution posted but have had no luck.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

-- KIM LUONG (KTL@kimluong.com), May 20, 2002.

if it still dont recognise the file or has some other errors etc still, the work best way is find a vcd that autoplays with its own vcd software which is loaded from the cd and copy that program from the vcd onto your harddrive then use that program to open other vcds which you couldnt watch using media player.. understand???? =P

-- Mr Veeee.. (immortal@hotmail.com), May 26, 2002.

Try to play it with powerDVD or some other DVD player. I believe windows media player doesn't have an mpeg2 codec or there are sometimes security reasons. I tried this little free player from Videolan with great success! http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download.html

-- Alex (noo_oonee@hotmail.com), May 28, 2002.

PowerDVD 2.5 won't do it either... corrupts with a green bottom half to the screen.

Any ideas?

Julian

-- Julian (celtikaos@hotmail.com), June 01, 2002.

just copy the file to u'r hard disk and run it from there (preferably open it from windows media player rather than double clicking the file.) In 99% cases it works. Make sure to copy from dos . i know its an ill task to do all the copying stuff, but so far i dont have another option with me.

-- vimal (vimal_666@hotmail.com), June 07, 2002.

I have same kind of problem.... I downloaded mediaplayer 7.1 for windows 2000.. Still I cannot play VCD... I get an ERROR " Incorrect Function".. Even I cannot Copy .dat file in my hard disk.. i get same error.. Any solution...

-- Street Walker (stretwalker@yahoo.com), July 24, 2002.

Hi there, I've had similar problems but I have found that there are some extended but brutal solutions. The best of these is to extract the file from the CD. For some reason on win2k it reads that there are errors in the dat file when you copy it. This error is even present in DOS. But. I did find one way round it, and even this doesn't always work!

You want to get a program called 'isobuster', a cd-r utility but excellent at getting stubborn files from CD's onto the HDD. If that doesn't work you can also use nero from ahead software (www.ahead.com, I think!) and make a nero image file (.nrg). Once done you use another program called 'VCD Gear' to convert this image file to the desired format, even mpeg if you like.

Sorry the urls are a bit thin on the ground there. I'm going to try something else quite drastic and will tell you all if that fixes things. I just can't understand why this problem is inherent in win2k and not other OS's......

Rod.

-- Rod Armstrong (brutus@bruts.freeserve.co.uk), July 24, 2002.

Im also having exactly the same problem I solved it originally by reinstalling win2k and used the toshiba dvd player program to play the vcd. However for some reason over a month or so it decided to stop running. ive tried from other programs but no luck. the main error comes up "either another program is using this driver or this driver is not installed" so somewhere along the way i loose the driver for *.dat files and it only seems to recognise the *.dat files as data files for w2k. as well tried copy onto the hard disk but no luck copies all the way until the end and then says its not possible due to errors. I too would like to know how i can find this driver and reinstall it. installing VCD programs doesnt install the driver. It must be a driver from W2k. im interested in a solution regards notebook toshiba tecra 8100 w2k.

-- Jason Moxon (jason.moxon@colbypowder.com), August 25, 2002.

I fixed Mine

i remove deamond tools (or any virtual cd rom software for that matter) then i deleted aspi32 and my cdrom drive out of device manager aspi may be hidden so select view->hidden devices

and refresh (may ask for reboot)

vcd`s for me!

-- CirCit (foo@bar.com), September 12, 2002.

I've found that 'mpegplayer' will play stubborn dat files. But first you have to change the configuration. Go to configuration,codec,mpeg codec and switch from 'mode 0' to 'mode 1'. Then the dat video file will play wether you open it from cd or on disk. This is a shareware program though and the trial is only 30 days. I'm still looking for a freeware program and a way to convert these files.

-- (jcp1164@vianet.ca), September 28, 2002.

Copy the .dat file to your hard drive and rename it to .mpg. Voila!

-- Jax Smith (jax_2u@hotty.com), October 07, 2002.

Well... Finally I have managed to view my VCD files on Win2k. As Rod suggested I tried "ISOBUSTER" - a piece of really great software. Now it can extract mpg frames from stubborn cd files, so you dont even have to convert it to mpg with VCD gear. Many thanks!!!!!

-- Peter Tokar (tokarz3@wp.pl), October 17, 2002.

There is a program you Can use to copy Damaged CDs to your Hard Disk is Here: http://www.geocities.com/estrujer20/programacion/CDRestorer.v1.01.zip

The program is done to copy corrupted CDs (read error) to disk, and can patch the affected Frames if the file was an AVI video.

-- The Barbarian (mcdmateos@mixmail.com), October 27, 2002.

I also have this problem with my Toshiba laptop Satellite with Microsoft Windows Xp Home Edition. The problem is that when I open a VCD in Media Player it shows this error "Incorrect Function" and also I can't copy .dat file to hard. Regards,

-- Saeed (smirjalili@hotmail.com), October 29, 2002.

Hi Everyone. I have a similar problem, but only when i burn a VCD in NERO Burning ROM. Attempting to play the newly burnt VCD, i end up with an "Incorrect Function" error. However, i have been using another burning program Instant CD/DVD and it works fine. If anyone has any ideas, please email or reply back on here. Thanks.

-- Matt Green (keithygeorge@hotmail.com), November 01, 2002.

I believe I have isolated & identified the conditions which cause this problem.

When a Video CD is authored and burnt with Nero 5.5.9.xx, and the Joliet (Secondary Volume Descriptor and directories using Unicode) box is checked - located on the ISO tab, then Windows 2000 will not be able to correctly access the files on the VCD at, I believe, the operating system level, given you cannot even copy a file from the VCD (illegal ms-dos function), let alone play it with Media Player.

When a Video CD is authored and burnt with Nero 5.5.9.xx, and the Joliet box is unchecked, then Windows 2000 is able to access the files on the VCD and is able to play the media files as per normal. Problem solved!!!

Windows 95 clients can play the VCD's either when the Joliet box is checked or un-checked. They don't appear to be affected at all by this setting. It only seems to affect Windows 2000 clients.

The question now is, whether this is an issue with Nero or Windows 2000. I suspect it is a bit of both given that these VCD's can play on Windows 95 clients, and from what I'm told on Windows XP clients also. It only seems to affect Windows 2000 clients.

Hope this helps.

-- Paul Pana (ppana@stanleyworks.com.au), November 06, 2002.

I had the similar problem playing back cd-r vcd created with nero 5.5.9.14 in windows 2000 professional (without any service pack). Such a vcd created with Nero could be played on a standalone dvd player. I could also play vcd created with other software such as Adaptec Easy Cd Creator 5 or physically compressed ones in windows 2000 using the same cd-rom, but not the one created with Nero! I could not even copy the .dat files to my harddisk.

After some painful research in the usenet and just as I was going to give up, I read a message posted on http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q- and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=008w1K suggesting deselecting Joliet support in the ISO tab while compiling the vcd will help. Although it does not work in my case (after I upgraded to Nero 5.5.9.17 available as free demo from www.nero.com, Joliet option is disabled and I could not select Joliet when compiling vcd), it struck on me that it may be compatibility problem caused by burning settings. I tried by adjusting the settings under ISO tab to the following and now I can play the newly created vcd on my computer! I guess that is because dos commands are required to access the .dat files at low level, so the vcd should be dos compatible.

File/Directory name length: iso level 1 Character Set: ISO 9660 Joliet: deselected (mine is disabled anyway) Relax ISO Restrictions: deselect all boxes (now there should be no message warning of compatibility problems at the bottom of the ISO tab).

Thanks Paul Pana for your great idea. I hope the above will help the others with similar problem. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

best regards.

Oliver

-- oliver liu (oliverlpp@yahoo.com), November 13, 2002.

That was great info from Paul Pana. Thanks for the tip. Now, is there really no easy way to modify something on W2k to be able to read the misformatted VCDs?

-- Gerald Jo Denoga (happy@up.edu.ph), November 25, 2002.

Gerald,

Fortunately, my PC is dual boot (Windows 95 & Windows 2000) and I was able to copy the video file to my hard disk when running Windows 95. I'm not running NTFS on my drive so I was able to do this.

If your hard disk has a FAT or FAT32 partition, with at least 850Mb free space, create a Windows 95 or 98 boot disk, and you should be able to DOS copy the VCD *.DAT file to your hard disk.

If your hard disk(s) are partitioned with NTFS, you'll need to "salvage" your video file on a non-Windows 2000 PC and then re- author your VCD and ensure the Joliet tab in not ticked in Nero.

It is interesting to note that the latest version of Nero 5.5.9.17 has the Joliet option disabled on the Video CD option. Probably in recognition of this issue.

Good luck.

Paul Pana

-- Paul Pana (ppana@stanleyworks.com.au), November 27, 2002.

Hey Oliver thanks for your answer. I'm burning a "test" VCD in Nero now with the options you suggested right now. Would this affect playback on a DVD Player?

-- Matt Green (keithygeorge@hotmail.com), December 03, 2002.

Great work guys, but has anyone been able to figure out how to recover those VCDs that were written in Joliet? I can't install another OS currently, perhaps there is a patch?

Also, my friend can play the VCD on his windows 2000 machine, though it is mangled and he has to extract the file to his computer and reburn it. Perhaps it is a combination of windows 2000 OS and CD-ROM?

-- confusion (confusion129@hotmail.com), January 05, 2003.

Thanks to Paul Microsoft has released a temporary fix for this problem. Here is the site.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811281

-- confusion (confusion129@hotmail.com), January 05, 2003.

Where as i have tried by: Installing new media player codecs. Installing Mediaplayer 9.0 beta. Installing MPEG-2/SVCD plugins. Having latest Nero Version software (Nero Burning ROM 5.5). Not even able to copy compiled .dat file on computer from VCD. I dont know what to with this. Any Inputs do revert back.

The Rock.

-- CCC (ccc.frontline@hp.com), January 15, 2003.

Anyone know where i could download this fix?

or is it just a case of waiting for sp4?

Thanks for the answer to this nightmare as i have been looking for an answer to this problem for months.

thanks agian guys :)

-- John Wilson (vortex@nildram.co.uk), January 19, 2003.

yup, I've seen it

best thing to do is to stay away from windows 2000

use XP, 98, 95 or even 3.1 :)

-- Shaun Tennant (sales@crownvideo.com), February 05, 2003.

What the heck are you talking about Win 3.1? Are you nutz! Who would even bother with 3.1? I think you had a few too many fruitcakes this morning (Mr. Shaun Tennant) !!! :-)

-- Brian Morin (bmorin@precisionsound.com), February 05, 2003.

What we can do to make sure it works is use a copy of the dat file in the root directory of the VCD with the extension changed to mpg instead of dat (when created with Nero), and have the _play.asx file reference the mpeg file instead of the dat file. (See www.vcdhelp.com for how to create the autoplay.ini file and the _play.asx file) The DVD player will play the .dat file properly, and the computer will autoplay the MPEG file.

The only disadvantage of this will be that we can't go more than about 35 minutes.

-- Kevin S (webmaster@crownvideo.com), February 05, 2003.

I have peculiar problem (but very much smilar" 1. I can play VCD. 2. I have some .dat files , which are splitted from a VCD, using VCDCutter(using this software u can cut portion of movie and play separately). 3. I can run this files from CD. 4. But when I copy these files(.dat) on Hard Disk and try to run. The first screen appears,and "seek bar"(pointer) is moving ahead.But Picture is still image(the first image). I have a NTFS file system.

Regds Rajesh More

-- Rajesh More (rajesh_more@hotmail.com), February 11, 2003.

I got the same problem as you guys, Windows Media Player is not going to play a VCD o SVCD. The problem as far as I know is make a VCD o SVCD with Nero. A friend of mine make a VCD with another program and it work perfectly.

PowerDVD 2.5 (someone tell me that the XP version works fine) won't do it either... corrupts with a green bottom half to the screen, some time you only gonna see a green screen and corrupt audio, and if you can make it with the Media Player you´re gonna get the same error.

Don´t know, maybe with a program made to play VCD and SVCD only can do it.

Here you can get one: http://www.vcdsp.com/modules.php? op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=viewdownload&cid=1

Or maybe installing Nimo Codec Pack 5.0 if you have install Media Player 6.x or upgrade to 7.x. This is the link: http://nimo.titanesk.com/modules/news/

If anyone got a diferent and effective solution for this please tellme.

-- Fabricio (angel_of_darkness_cr@yahoo.com), March 12, 2003.

Hi, all!

I couldn't play a VCD (which comes as an addition to a commercial book) on my Windows 2000 Professional OS. But this morning I could play it on the Windows 98 machines in my university. After some futile search in groups.google.com I found this thread and tried VLC player which surprisingly played my VCD (PowerDVD, Micro DVD Player, BSPLayer, DIVX Player, Elecard decoder, and finally Windows Media Player 9 couldn't play it) It seems my VCD was created with Nero with the Joliet option selected. Nevertheless, the VCD playback is frequently interrupted so I think that i should rewrite the disk. At the moment I'm downloading Iso Buster to rip the DAT file off the CD.

So, thank you all for your help :)

-- Johnnie Walker (grozdova@hotmail.com), March 17, 2003.

Guys,

If you don't want to re-burn your VCD's, the VLC is the best working solution. And it's free, very good player, BTW.

Just remember the name: VLS

Good Luck!

-- Jan (janatwork@softhome.net), April 20, 2003.

I also noticed somethink. The vcds which can be playback with win2k has two tracks (when you look at cd with isobuster). But the vcds which don't playback with win2k has only one track(again look at cd with isobuster). I am using Nero to burn vcds. Older versions create vcds with two tracks which can be playback normally with win2k but the new versions create vcds with only one track and they can not be playback with win2k.

-- Batuhan Kisacikoglu (batuhank@yahoo.com), May 23, 2003.

Can someone direct me to the fix from Microsoft? Apparently Microsoft wants me to call them so they can tell me where it is. They say the file is free but the call may cost me $245.

Thanks,

Mark

-- Mark Taylor (mark@sunsetpass.com), May 25, 2003.

I am looking for that MS inmediate fix. If anyone got the file from Microsoft, could you please share it please?

Thanks

-- Clairvo (clairvo@softhome.net), May 27, 2003.

Guys and Gals,

Good news. It appears the fix for this problem will be included in Windows 2000 SP4 (refer Microsoft article no. 811281). I reported the problem to Microsoft some months ago, and they sent me a hotfix which did resolve the problem. I tested it on a few machines and VCD's burnt with Nero 5.5 (with the Joliet option checked) could now be played on W2K machines.

Download and apply Windows 2000 SP4. Good luck.

Paul

-- Paul Pana (ppana@stanleyworks.com.au), June 30, 2003.

Don't suppose the fix is kicking around by itself? I don't fancy the massive sp4 download just to watch vcds! (I ask on behalf of all 56K- ers!)

-- Matt Brown (lionrampant31NOSPAM@hotmail.com), July 04, 2003.

I installed SP4 but it didn't fix the problem as it claimed it would! I still have the exact same problem with the VCDs...Can anyone please contribute the Microsoft fix?

-- Ali Pouladi (dude_170@yahoo.com), July 06, 2003.

Hi,

If the VCD is burned in Nero with Joliet unticked it plays in Windows 2000. It's Microsoft screwing with the format so they can claim VCD is obsolete because it won't work on their latest OSs. They forget to mention it won't work because they deliberately broke it.

Cheers,

Julian

-- Julian Hall (celtic.kaos@virgin.net), August 08, 2003.

Greetings,

Service pack 4 does not rectify the issue. If anything, service pack 4 is evil... do NOT install it unless you really, desperately need to have the latest garbage M$ throws at you, due to some mental illness. My pc has suffered as a result of it... and for some reason, it causes win2k not to play nice with certain programs anymore (norton personal firewall 2001 is an example - this is actually documented somewhere on the M$ site).

It would have been very useful if this hot fix for playing vcds had been made available, rather than just promoting a ass-achingly slow download over 56k, which causes an otherwise fine OS (the person who recommends XP over 2K should go back to playing consoles) to be just as ass-aching as the majority of other M$ os's.

Apparently the VLS program causes virus scanners to scream 'trojan'... hrm. I'm downloading it now... whether or not I'll believe the assurances on their web site, is another matter. Time will tell.

-- ~sote~ (state_of_the_enemy@yahoo.com), October 22, 2003.

I had the same problem playing VCD / copying .DAT file on Win2K SP2, I Upgraded to SP4, and fixed the problem... enough said.

-- andy jawa (andyjawa@yahoo.com), December 30, 2003.

Guys,

Rod has given the perfect solution.......

Just download ISOBUSTER it really extracts .dat files from dead CD's.

-- Ketan (ketan@mutualpr.com), May 21, 2004.