Golden Runways,
If you wanted to try another DVD Player, try:
NVDVD from nVidia
I do not believe deleting your DVD Drive and adding it back in will help you since you crash 30 sec in to a DVD.
I was looking over the BIOS Revisions for your Motherboard and one of them listed this fix:
1. Fixed RealMagic DVD decoder of PC Card(EM8300) responsed invalid bus/dev/func number during POST
2. Fixed RAID card (kurokutosikou ATA100PCI) couldn't work properly
That was BIOS k7s5a020626 for K7S5A for PSB Ver 3.1 (Not sure if that was your PCB Rev or not). I know you are not using a hardware decoder, but there could be some issues with the BIOS and DVD Playback.
If you are going to Flash to the latest BIOS (which I highly recommend, from the BIOS History I was looking at), I would be happy to help you with Flashing.
Flashing is a fairly straight forward process, but it is critical that you do it properly.
1) Write Down all the Settings in your BIOS.
2) Create a Bootable Floppy
3) Download the new BIOS and Flash Utility.
4) Unzip the BIOS to the Floppy and copy the Flash Utility to the Floppy.
5) Reboot the computer with the Floppy in the Drive.
6) Run the Flash Utility and when it prompts you list the name of the BIOS Program on the Floppy.
7) When it is done reboot and go in to the BIOS.
8) Load Setup Defaults
9) Go back in to the BIOS and put all your settings back.
Now you are done.
Important Note: You must let the BIOS Flash Utility Finish Flashing once it starts. If you shut off your computer mid Flash, you will turn your motherboard into an expensive Keychain!
Take Care,
Richard
P.S. It might be time to re-install WinME again.