Drive Region Info
Drive Region Info is an utility to examine whether your DVD drive is region protected or not.
When you have just bought a new drive, it is most likely region protected and you can change the region code only 5 times.
Usage
Before testing your drive with the 'Drive Region Info' program, insert a DVD in your drive.
Some drives will not give correct region info without DVD.
If you use Windows 95, 98, 98SE or ME and the program crashes at startup or does not find any drives (and you definitely have a CD or DVD drive),
then most likely there is a problem with the ASPI layer on your system.
Other programs that also use the ASPI layer, like CD recording software and DVD players, will probably not work correctly too.
Update the ASPI layer to solve this problem.
If you use Windows 2000 or XP and look at the properties of your drive, you will see a 'DVD Region' tabsheet.
This is very misleading, because Windows will use its internal region coding system if the drive itself is region free.
Therefore always use Drive Region Info, it will tell you the real status of your drive.
Download
Drive Region Info V2.2
Information
The name of the drive in the dropdown box is constructed of 3 parts:
- Name of the manufacturer (the first part, max 8 characters).
- Drive type (the middle part, max 16 characters).
- Firmware revision (the last part, 4 characters).
If your drive is region protected, you will see the following extra info:
- Region code: If the drive is new, the value will probably be 'Not set', otherwise it will tell the current region code of the drive.
- User changes left: The number of times you can change the region code of this drive. If the drive is new this value will probably be 5, otherwise it will be lower. If this value is 0 you can not change the region code anymore.
- Manufacturer changes left: The number of times the manufacturer can change the region code of this drive. This is a fail safe system in case the user has used up all his changes and the drive is locked to the wrong region.
- Status: this will be one of the following values:
- Not set: The drive is new and the region code is not set yet.
- Not permanent: The region code is set, but can still be changed by the user (the number of user changes is not 0).
- Permanent, but can be changed by manufacturer: The number of user changes is 0, but the number of manufacturer changes is not 0. The user can not change the region code of the drive anymore.
- Fixed, can not be changed: Both the user and manufacturer changes are 0 and the drive is permanently locked to the current region.
Revision History
Version 2.2 (November 5, 2002)
- Driveletter added in front of the drive name.
Version 2.1 (December 20, 2001)
- Solved a compiler bug or problem that caused the program to crash on Windows 9x (95, 98, 98SE and ME).
Version 2.0 (December 5, 2001)
- Support for Windows NT4, 2000 and XP. The V1.x versions were not always very reliable when used with NT based versions of Windows. This is fixed now.
Version 1.1 (July 7, 2000)
- Problems with ASPI layer detected: Usually caused by faulty IDE drivers on motherboards with VIA chipset.
- Missing ASPI layer detected: Usually the case on Windows NT and 2000.
- Thanks to JoY for designing the icon!
Version 1.02 (February 8, 1999)
- Again fixed some small problems with interpretation of the region information.
Version 1.01 (December 18, 1998)
- It seemed that some drives have region protection, but report that all regions can be played. In this case the program reported region code 8. This is fixed now.
Version 1.0 (December 9, 1998)
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