Make Your DVD-ROM Drive Region-Free

DVD-ROM Drives sometimes cannot be able to read some DVDs. And this problem can be caused by a region problem. Most of the DVD-ROM/writers today have region settings. Normally there are 5 regions. DVD drives that cannot read some DVDs might be restricted within a region. However, you can make your DVD-ROM region-free. This article will show you how.

Making a DVD-ROM region-free might be difficult to accomplish. In fact, not every DVD-ROM are not modifiable to being region-free. So don't wonder if you cannot make your DVD-ROM drive region-free. There are other ways to playback DVD movies in other regions though. But if you are fortunate and your DVD drive can be made into region-free, then you should. A region-free DVD will save you a lot of trouble.

Making DVD-ROM drives region-free will need you to use a region-free patched firmware to replace the current firmware in your DVD-ROM drive. Bear in mind that firmwares are the very important piece of software that drives your DVD-ROM drive's operations. Usually firmware designed for a certain drive will never work on a firmware designed for another drive unless the drives share the same basic design. Moreover, if you don't know what you are doing, updating the firmware can be dangerous. Bad firmware flash can permanently destroy your DVD drive and even void your warrantee at the same time.

If you are looking for the new region free firmwares and tools, please check them out here. There are different uploading/flashing instructions for each firmware. It is very important to read very carefully the included documentations.

After applying the region-free firmware, you refer to the instructions outlined on this page. After then you will see if your DVD-ROM drive is now region-free or not or whether the firmware is working properly or not. Make it sure also to let Windows re-install and re-detect the DVD-ROM drivers and re-install your DVD player software.

You may want to try to rip the DVD to your hard-drive, strip out the region information in the process to make the ripped movie region-free if your DVD-ROM is not listed on either of these pages or is listed as having an RPC-2 region-locking firmware only. And by then you can try to playback the movie on your hard-drive. For further information, please check RipHelp's DVD Ripping Guide

If your DVD-ROM drive is not listed on either of these pages, or is listed as having an RPC-2 (region-locking) firmware only, then you may want to try to rip the DVD to your hard-drive, strip out the region information in the process (to make the ripped movie region-free), and then playback the movie on your hard-drive. For more information, please refer to RipHelp's DVD Ripping Guide. Use the "Rip the Entire DVD" section.

In short, here's the step by step process of doing these things:

1. Locate a region-free firmware for your DVD-ROM drive:
Please check it out here.

2. If a region-free firmware is available for your drive, apply it:

a. After you flash your drive with the new region-free firmware, make sure that it has worked by detecting the region status of your drive.

b. If the firmware hasn't worked, try again. If it has worked, you'll now need to let Windows re-install your DVD-ROM drivers (not always needed). You can do this by Click on the "Start" button -> "Settings" -> "Control Panel" -> "System" -> "Device Manager" -> "CDROM" -> delete/remove the item associated with your DVD-ROM drive. Restart your computer (Windows will now automatically re-detect your DVD-ROM drive - you may need your Windows setup files/CD).

c. You may also want to re-install your software DVD player.

3. If there is no region-free firmware for your drive, then you may want to "Rip the Entire DVD" and "Strip out the region code" while ripping :

Here's the RipHelp's DVD Ripping Guide.