Disc is not opened

[Gordiac]

As the title states, my DVDFab Passkey either won't open the disc or would open it in a clipped and slow manner.

The drive itself is almost brand new which is why I doubt that's where the problem is.

Also: tried upgrading or downgrading version to no avail.

[Rich86]

What licensed version of passkey are you running?
What bluray title are you having trouble with?

[Gordiac]

At the moment, the most current one - 9.4.2.0. Once I've had the mishap, it was 9.4.1.8, I believe.

I'm using Passkey for both DVDs and Blu-Rays. This time around it was a DVD ("Green Acres") which played for a bit over 20 minutes and then started skipping frames.

At the moment the PC recognizes the disk as well as Passkey, yet it alters between not being opened or running corruptly, as I've stated above. It applies to every disk I'm attempting to use.

[Rich86]

Please forgive the questions - just trying to put together the total environment.
What program are you using to play/view these titles?
Are these the original discs you are using? Copies? ISOs or files off your hard drive?

[Gordiac]

No need to apologize for the questions - you ARE trying to help

I'm mostly using PowerDVD 14.

The discs are original.

[Rich86]

If the source discs being played are original, I'm not sure you need to be running Passkey at all.
Maybe try disabling Passkey for these original discs and see if that works better?

[Gordiac]

I need Passkey because I'm using the PC as a player in order to toggle between zones.

Currently the discs are either not opened at all by Passkey and then naturally won't run, or it's recognized by the PC/Passkey and will run quite "heavily" on the computer.

I've tried running without it with zero success.

The player itself (ASUS) ran merely about 5 discs by now with no problems, so the malfunction came as a great-and unwanted-surprise for me today.

[Rich86]

ok - I understand better.
When Passkey doesn't recognize the disc at all is 1 problem.
When it opens the disc ok but playback is inconsistent, that would seem to be a somewhat different issue (but probably related).
I don't have any experience using passkey to permit me to play multiple zones - I've been strictly BD=A & DVD=1.
I'm going to try watching a couple of BDs and DVDs thru Media Player with Passkey activated on my laptop (Dell Intel Core i-7 running Win 10 - internal DVD drive and external BD drive) and see what happens here.

[Gordiac]

If you intend to use WMP on Windows 10 in order to watch DVDs - Microsoft disabled it. Try Media Player Classic.

[Rich86]

It would appear these programs do not always play nicely together. Here is what I tried and what happened.

Internal DVD drive with a DVD:
It did not play the first time I tried it. I ejected the disc, then I shut down both Passkey and Fab Media Player (completely via the hidden icons box).
Then I put the DVD in the drive and waited for the machine to accept it. Then I launched Passkey and waited for it to complete scanning the disc. Then I launched Media Player in full menu mode and it played the DVD ok. I did not let the entire disc run.

External LG BD writer with a BD:
I followed the same steps here as what worked for the DVD. Everything seemed ok until the menu items completed and I clicked "Play" in the menu and it tried to play the main feature . . then the program just went off into lala land. I tried multiple times with the same result. It did not matter if Passkey was running or not.
I shut down the programs and ejected the disc. Then I reset Media Player to "simple mode" playback (meaning it skips the menus and goes straight to what it thinks is the main feature).
Then loaded the disc, launched passkey, launched media player, waiting between each of the steps.That worked - the movie started playing.

I am confident I could easily rip either of these discs to my hard drive via Passkey.

You mentioned Media Player Classic earlier. I don't think it supports full menu mode, but can you play the main feature for these problematic titles via MPC?
Another program I use is VLC Media player . . it works well also, but not with menus.

[Gordiac]

Tried using MPC once the problems started, it won't play due to region code problem.

VLC attempted playing, but showed the menu as if it's a very scratched disk.

And to further complicate matters: I've re-installed 9.4.1.7 and all of a sudden everything seemed to work properly. Took no chances, ejected the disk and then re-inserted it to get the same result. I've skipped through every 30 seconds in a 25 minutes episode and it still looks well. I've no idea what exactly caused it and how long will it last.