Microsoft DirectX 9.0

Setting the Initial DVD Region in Windows 98 and Windows 2000

It is the responsibility of the system manufacturer to select an initial DVD region for the DVD drive in their PCs.

Important   Only encrypted discs can be used to set the region.

If the manufacturer does not set a region, on first boot the Windows 98 Operating System base components will pick a region based on the Operating System language and the time zone and set the drive to that region. The system manufacturer is free to set the region on the drive and if that is not done during the manufacturing process, it is up to Windows to select the drive's region based on the best guess it can make.

For RPC2 drives, if during the setup process Windows 2000 finds that the drive does not have any region set (for example fresh drive), it will try to pick a region as above, but only if there is a disc in the drive. (RPC1 drives will choose the region without any disc in drive). Once a region is set for RPC2 drives, it is not auto-changed by either a re-installation or a clean installation of the Operating System.

The registry key on Windows 2000 systems is HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\<CDROM GUID>\ <instance number>\DefaultDVDRegion(binary) .