Dimitra’s laptop refused to play some DVDs she wanted to watch: it had no problem playing other DVDs, neither had the other computer a problem to play the same DVDs. Still, after several restarts and reconfigurations, the laptop insisted that no DVD was present. A weird problem that, unfortunately, we have not found the source of yet. However, with it being Sunday and all helplines closed, we came up with a nice work around: we downloaded this nice (and free) little program called MagicDisc. On the other computer, I made an image of the DVD (a .uif file), which we then copied to the laptop over our wireless network. On the laptop, we used the same program to mount the image , after which it was recognized as a new DVD-drive. The ‘DVD’ played easily.

It took me some time to come up with this solution and then some more time to find the right progrems; hence I thought I’d share it here. Also, apparently there are rogue copies of MagicDisc around: best to do some antivirus scanning before installing it!