After playing Nero DVD, player will not play Region 1 DVDS! HELP!

[Den2101]

Hi there,

I am studying abroad in Egypt (I'm American) and I bought a movie off the street to play on my Dell 1405 inspiron laptop. After playing the movie for about 10 minutes, the screen froze and I after trying to mess with it for a while, I gave up and ejected it. Later, I put in one of my own DVDs from home (burned DVD) and my player will not read it correctly (my DVDs were working just fine before I tried the egytian bootleg). When I play my DVDs, the sound and video is choppy. I tried to change the settings in Device Manager, but it is already set to Region 1. I have a strong suspicion that the ripped egyptian Nero DVD I used somehow caused this because when I tried to play the it again, it worked just fine, unlike my own DVDs. MY music CDs are also choppy. Can anyone help? This is driving me nuts!

Thanks!

D

[Den2101]

Another thing...

The egyptian CDs I used have labels on them. Could it be a mechanical problem rather than software related? I'm wondering if the label somehow put the laser out of balance so now when I put a label-less (thinner) DVD, it has trouble reading it correctly. The skipping is subtle, it doesn't just freeze, it continues to play but its sort of "tapping" every third frame or so and the sound is doing the same. If the label screwed up my player, what now?

Thanks again everyone!

D

[Den2101]

Oh, another thing... I just peeled off the label. Turns out the movie is not actually burned on a DVD but a CD-R! Help me solve this mystery!