DVD only plays region 0 disks

This has been perplexing me for some time.
I have an RM PIII 850mhz laptop, with 256mb RAM, 12 Speed DVD Drive, 8mb Video card and Windows XP Home Edition

Orignally the laptop came with Win 98 pre-installed but they had installed it in some bizarre way which made about 4gb unreadable so I reformatted and installed 98 clean. Since then I have been unable to play DVD disks, until one day when I tried again with a film and it worked, figured out that I could play Region 0/Free disks fine but no other disks.
I've tried updating the firmware, used WinDVD and PowerDVD and a hardware DVD decoder - still no joy, actually freezes the program when it trys to play and then refuses to eject the disk until you restart the PC.
I have software that lets me rip the film onto the hard drive then watch it or convert it onto CD-RW but this takes time and is very annoying.
Anyone else had this problem or know what might have caused it? The manufacturers refuse to even try and help as I bought it second hand.
Many thanks.

Oh lord, I bet this'll get edited soon. For your WinDVD Software get the "regionless" mod: DVD Genie allows you to modify the region code for software-based DVD Players including such players as Software Cinemaster, PowerDVD and WinDVD. It also allows you to tweak these programs with undocumented features to better fit your system.

Mod's, this is NOT a hack, it allows you access features ALREADY BUILT IN to your DVD player that YOU own.

Mind you, this is only a workaround for your problem.

Thanks for the suggestion but alas I tried that yesterday, still no joy!

Drive Model?
Some drives are region coded - Check this link and see for your self if the drive fits the discription...
<a href="http://www.inmatrix.com/drives.html" target="_blank">http://www.inmatrix.com/drives.html</a>


Cheers,
Gabriel

Cheers Gabriel, I followed your link and in a roundabout way I eventually got to upgrading the firmware which I had tried before but always failed so for anyone else who gets this problem
I have a Toshiba DVD-Rom Laptop Drive.
Solution:
Download earliest frimware for drive.
Boot from a Windows 95 Floppy Disk.
You will not be able to see C: drive as XP is NTFS and the boot disk won't see it so make sure the HEX firmware files are on FD.
Downgrade the firmware and restart into windows.
Play a DVD off the region you want to be the default (Region 2 in my case)
Download latest firmware for drive.
Restart with Win95 boot disk.
Upgrade firmware to latest version.
Restart and hey presto you can play Region 2 disks in perfect quality.
--As an added bonus I then upgraded the firmware to the latest X version, this now renders the drive region free and you can use software to make PowerDVD, WinDVD etc.. to play any regions.
Marvelous.
Thanks All
Mr Claws.