Annoyingly Windows Vista Business Edition doesn’t come with any means of playing back DVDs.  When you try to play a DVD Windows Media Player will helpfully point you in the direction of various commercial DVD decoders priced at around £20 which, frankly, is a rip off considering there is a very simple and most importantly free way to achieve exactly the same thing.

All you need to do is download and run the K-Lite Standard codec pack. When you get to the component selection screen click the arrow next to the drop-down menu and select ‘deselect all’ then scroll down the list and select the ‘MPEG2, DVD’ > ‘Cyberlink’ decoder. The drop-down will change from ‘deselect all’ to ‘custom selection’. Click next and follow then instructions on screen. You might need to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

That’s it, you’re done. You can now play DVD’s in Windows Media Player.

Thanks to Daniel. F. Pigatto for the picture.