CarolineJ wrote:
Hi Joey,
Thanks for this but sadly It was me! I changed it 5 times, the problem was I was watching UK movie DVD's and alternating those with a friends US box set of Battlestar Galactica (not sure why I needed to explain that!), unfortunately as I was on enough medication to bring a horse down I just didn't realise the implications of the warning (I know!)
I think we mostly understood that you were switching between DVDs from different regions and your were half-knowingly approving the region changes while under medication.
It's such a shame as this laptop was a brand new replacement for my 7 year old ibook and I had only had it a matter of days before I was in hospital. I'm happy to buy a new drive if that's what I have to do but thought I should exhaust every avenue first. Thanks again
Well - region changes are also going to be in the OSX software. At least that should be the case for Apple's own DVD Player software. You might even need something like a complete operating system reinstall.
I did a little search, and there are ways to do reset the region coding to 0 changes, although there are risks such as completely killing the firmware in the drive. I wouldn't recommend doing it yourself. I don't think there's anything necessarily illegal about doing it, but it does have its risks. The drive manufacturers certainly don't want users to "own the keys" to resetting the number of region changes.
One of the things I found out is that if you ask nicely, you might be able to get the drive manufacturer to reset the number of region changes back to 0. They have the software tools to do this but again they don't want end users doing it themselves. You might even consider politely explaining your situation at an Apple Store, which might be able to do this for you (I don't know if they will, but it's worth a try). The main thing I've heard is that a drive manufacturer or Apple is not likely to do this more than once (or twice in rare cases).