I have all kind of problem trying to play blu-ray movie on my Dell Studio Slim 540S. The blu-ray drive is PLDS BD-RE DX-4B15. It is running on Vista. It used to be PowerDVD Dx 8.1, but it is updated with the latest PowerDVD Dx 8.3. It used to work fine several months ago.

When I tried to play “State of Play” blu-ray movie, it popped up with: "A critical component of the blu-ray Player requires periodic updates. New movie could fail to if the critical component is not updated promptly." I click Update Now, and it said No update is currently available.

I spent roughly 3 hours with Dell Tech support last night. They tried to un-install all the PowerDVD and all the software that related to blu-ray encoders. I'm talking about they literally un-installed all PowerDVD stuff and my DirecTV2PC, PowerDVDdirector, PowerDVD2go, games, etc. I told them it used to work with all these software in it, and it should work with it now but they un-installed it anyway. It'll take me forever to re-install all my software.

After they un-installed everything, they re-installed the PowerDVD Dx 8.1 and updated it to 8.3, and still didn't work. They tried the PowerDVD 9 trial version, and it didn't work either. From my past experiences, the trial version usually wouldn't work very well anyway. They do not include all the necessary files in it. They tried the VCL media player, and it still didn't work.

The blu-ray drive is functioning fine, because it can plays standard DVD movie fine. They provided a phone number for their software expert. I'll try to call them tonight. They are probably will delete everything in my PC or format my hard drive. I hate it when they do that. It'll waste a lot of my time to re-install it.

I thought that someone here might encountered this problem too and might have a better idea how to fix it...! Is there any suggestion before I give Dell software expert a call?

Thanks.