Overview of how to watch different region disks on your PC.

In order to stop people watching different region disks on their PCs, manufacturers are forced to add a special "region lock" to their DVD-Drives. This lock is designed to give you only 5 chances to change the region. After this your region will be locked to the last used region and cannot be changed.

Step 1: Check if your DVD-Drive is region locked or not.

To check whether your DVD-Drive is currently region locked or not you can download "CDVD Info" which will give you information on your DVD-Drives current lock status. Download "Drive Info" from http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/dvds/driveinfo22.exe. If it reports your Drive is already region free then you can go straight to Step 3.

Step 2: Unlock your DVD-Drive:

To enable you to watch multiple region disks on your PC first you must first download a new firmware for your DVD-Drive that does not contain this region lock. A firmware is simply a piece of software that is on your DVD-Drive, that behaves like a system bios. This firmware contains the region lock. Most drives have a firmware available that is not region locked. Most of the available firmwares for each DVD-Drive have been added to http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_all.php Here you should search for a region free firmware update that is designed for your drive. Make sure you download a firmware that is for your exact model. Failure to do so may result in the death of your DVD-Drive. Note that whenever you see "RPC-1" that means that it is region free, and "RPC-2" means that it is still region locked. Once you find a region free patch\firmware for your drive you can put it onto the drive. Putting this new firmware onto your DVD-Drive is known as flashing. You will usually need to start your PC from a floppy disk, and into dos mode before you can flash. If you need to download a Windows98 or XP bootdisk you can download some from http://www.bootdisk.com. For some drives, eg. Lite-On a simple utility that can be run from Windows can be used to unlock the firmware already on the drive.

Step 3: Use WinDVD Tweaker \ PowerDVD Tweaker to bypass their own Region Lock:

After your DVD-Drive is region free, then WinDVD \ PowerDVD will try to take its place and will record how many times you have changed the region. This is where WinDVD Tweaker \ PowerDVD Tweaker comes in. By selecting "Automatically Remove Region Protection on DVD Insert" from the Region tab, WinDVD Tweaker Pro \ PowerDVD Tweaker Pro will automatically set WinDVD \ PowerDVD to use the correct region but not bring your "5 tries left" counter down. If for some reason the counter has reached zero, then you can click on the "Set Counter back to 5" button in the Region tab.