Regional setting on the DVD drive on my Vaio

[Laughing]

Hi,

I've just bought a VGN A 417s. Had a few problems with (amongst other things) my hard drive which, for a period of about a month, my Vaio could not find - no idea why - and then all of a sudden it started working again, no idea how (the tech support solution - download the firmware software - said "can't find supported drive" and did not help).

However, whilst messing about in the software, I discovered a fuction saying that my Vaio is set to a particular regional setting (region 2) and if I wanted to change the setting I could choose from a list of countries BUT I CAN ONLY CHANGE THE SETTING 4 TIMES, after which it will stay on the last region I set it to. If I understand correctly, this will mean that after I have changed the setting 4 times to watch DVDs from different regions, I am then barred from watching DVDs from any other region.

I am more than a little miffed to find this on my VAIO - SO, my questions are:
1. Can Sony legitimately/legally prevent me from watching DVDs from ANY region on my VAIO;
2. If, as I (somewhat randomly) assume, not - then can I remove this restriction from my DVD drive; and
3. If so, how is it done?

Happy for Sony to reply explaining any of the above if you wish.

[jimmex]

I regular globe trot for work reasons and buying dvd's in different countries used to give me this problem.

Now I have a AnyDVD software installed on my machine and that solves the problem

Curiously enough when I bought my VGN-A417M in the UK 6 months back it was set to Asian region - not much use for UK DVDs but as I was moving to Asia two days later it could have been foresight on the part of Sony - nah!! I don't think so - LOL!!

Check out the software - it should sort you out

[Laughing]

Thank you Jimmex. Much appreciated.