Reading DVD movies... that was short-lived!

So it worked until I rebooted, then it went back to its original behaviour. The registry was still the same and no values had reverted. Some driver somewhere is unhappy.

Further searching has turned up a couple of leads of the same behaviour, but no real solutions (reinstall? Err, no thanks!) I'll keep digging, and may restore the PX file and see if that helps.

My laptop wouldn't recognize movie DVDs anymore

My laptop has progressively gotten worse and worse about recognizing movies. It would recognize some some of the time, and others not at all, frequently acting like there was no DVD in the drive.

These are original movie DVDs, and the ones that it struggled with are copy protected. As everyone knows, DRM is starting to become commonplace.

Resolution
My resolution was to download this file:
http://www.aumha.org/downloads/cdgone.zip

And run "cdgone.reg" from it.

The "EditReg.reg" file changes Windows so when you double-click a *.reg file, it opens in Notepad rather than automatically merging (kinda scary "feature", there, Microsoft).

I also renamed c:\windows\system32\drivers\PXHelp20.sys to PXHelp20.sys.old since it seems that many sites referencing this file feel it's buggy.

Wa-Bam!, I can read movie DVDs again - no reboot even required!!

The copy-protected DVDs take a while to load (the drive grinds on 'em), but then they come up.

Notes
I had tried several other solutions, include removing UpperFilter and LowerFilter from this registry entry, but it didn't work.
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

I also tried Apple's solution of removing LowFilter and using their GEARs.... driver in the HighFilter, no joy.

I may have to reinstall some of my software if it won't read the drives any more, but the couple I've tried seem unaffected so far. It's early yet.

cdgone.reg (for reference in case it stops being hosted)
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}]
"UpperFilters"=-
"LowerFilters"=-

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdr4_2K]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdralw2k]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdudf]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UdfReadr]