Oooh! What a lot of questions!.
In order, Rick Storm. No wonder you are confused, if I had taught Danny to fly I would be too.
So, when I insert the DVD a player is offered as I listed them above. At that point they will not run. Windows Media opens buts hangs - I give up and reset - takes that long!
Finally my optical drives play all regions as do my DVD players.
BOAC, I can play CD's very happily on both drives and the Device Manager has them loaded and working properly.
Spanners, all DVD's that play on my players are mostly -R but I can play all types and all regions - as I used to do on my PC. DVD-R's I wrote with Lite-On or Samsung LiteScribe Writemaster - one of the latest.
I should add that PowerDVD would hang for as much as 10 mintues. WinDVD would not load at all - and hang. Or the others I mention.
I have cleaned up the pooter and
AFAIK it is running well.