You bought a DVD on vacation, or ordered one from abroad because it was never released in your country, or inherited a box of discs from a relative overseas. The disc is in perfect condition. It plays fine in the player it came from. But when you insert it into your Windows PC, you get an error about the “wrong region,” or the player software simply refuses to start the movie with no explanation at all.
Nothing is broken. The disc is fine, the drive is fine, and your player software is fine. You have run into one of the oldest forms of digital geography: the DVD region code, a system from the 1990s that splits the world into zones and tells your drive which discs it is allowed to play.
Quick answer: Every commercial DVD carries a region code (1 for North America, 2 for Europe, and so on), and your PC’s DVD drive is set to one region. If they don’t match, playback is blocked by the drive itself — not by Windows or your player app. You can check and change your drive’s region in Device Manager, but most drives only allow five changes before locking permanently. If your drive and disc regions match and you just need software that plays the disc, MediaPlay DVD Player (free from the Microsoft Store) handles standard region playback automatically.
What region codes are and why they exist
In the mid-1990s, movie studios released films in theaters at different times around the world. A film might open in the United States in May and not reach European cinemas until September. DVDs created a problem: if an American disc could play anywhere, Europeans could import the movie before it even hit their theaters.
The studios’ solution was to divide the world into regions and encode every disc — and every drive — with a region number. A disc only plays on a drive whose region matches. The system also let studios sell the same film at different prices in different markets and license distribution rights country by country.
Staggered theatrical releases have largely disappeared, but the region system never went away. Every commercial DVD pressed today still carries a region code, and every DVD drive sold still enforces one.
The region map
| Region | Territories |
|---|---|
| Region 1 | United States, Canada, US territories |
| Region 2 | Europe, Japan, Middle East, South Africa, Greenland |
| Region 3 | Southeast Asia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan |
| Region 4 | Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, Caribbean |
| Region 5 | Russia, India, most of Africa, Central Asia |
| Region 6 | Mainland China |
| Region 7 | Reserved (not used for retail discs) |
| Region 8 | International venues: airplanes, cruise ships |
| Region 0 / ALL | Region-free discs — play on any drive |
The region code is usually printed on the back of the DVD case — look for a small globe icon with a number inside it. Discs marked “0,” “ALL,” or showing several numbers (like “2, 4, 5”) play in all the listed regions. Many independent films, concert discs, and home-recorded DVDs are region-free.
How to check your drive’s region in Windows
Windows shows you exactly which region your drive is set to, and how many changes you have left:
- Right-click the Start button and choose Device Manager
- Expand DVD/CD-ROM drives
- Right-click your drive and choose Properties
- Open the DVD Region tab
You will see the current region, a country list for changing it, and a line that matters more than anything else on the tab: Changes remaining.
If the tab says “Current Region: Not Selected,” your drive is brand new and has never played a region-coded disc. The first region-coded disc you play (or the first region you select) sets the drive’s region and starts the counter.
The five-change limit — and why it is not a Windows setting
This is the part of the system that surprises people most. The region setting does not live in Windows. It lives in the drive’s own firmware, on a counter that ships from the factory set to five.
Each time you change the region, the counter goes down by one. When it reaches zero, the drive locks permanently to the last region you selected. Reinstalling Windows does not reset it. Moving the drive to another computer does not reset it. The counter is stored in non-volatile memory inside the drive itself, and Windows cannot override it — Microsoft’s own documentation is explicit that the limit is enforced in hardware.
A bit of history explains why. The earliest DVD drives (roughly pre-2000) used a system called RPC-1, where the drive itself ignored regions and enforcement was left to the player software. Studios considered that too easy to get around, so since around 2000 essentially all drives use RPC-2: the drive hardware checks the region before it will even hand the decrypted video to the computer. Every internal and external DVD drive you can buy today is RPC-2.
The practical consequences:
- Treat region changes as a scarce resource. Changing the region to watch one disc, then changing back, costs two of your five changes.
- Think before the last change. When “Changes remaining” hits 1, the next change is final. The drive will be locked to that region forever.
- A locked drive cannot be reset by you. If the counter reaches zero, only the drive manufacturer could theoretically reset it, and in practice most do not offer this service. The realistic fix is a different drive.
Your options when the disc and drive don’t match
Option 1: Change the drive’s region (best for a permanent move)
If you have moved countries, or your disc collection is overwhelmingly from one other region, changing the drive region once is the clean, supported solution. Open the DVD Region tab as described above, select the new country, confirm, and the drive switches. Use this deliberately — once, in one direction — rather than toggling back and forth.
Option 2: Use a second drive for the second region (best for mixed collections)
If you regularly play discs from two regions — say, a German collection and a stack of US imports — the most practical setup is two drives, one set to each region. External USB DVD drives are inexpensive, and each drive carries its own independent region counter. Set the external drive to the import region on first use, leave your internal drive on the local region, and both collections play without ever touching a counter again.
This is the approach we recommend most often, because it is permanent, uses no legal grey areas, and costs less than most single imported box sets.
Option 3: Software that reads around the drive (a grey area)
Some player software — VLC is the best-known example — uses its own decryption library instead of asking the drive to validate the region. On some drives this allows an out-of-region disc to play without changing the drive’s region setting. It does not work on all drives, because many RPC-2 drives refuse to read the disc at the hardware level regardless of what software asks.
Be aware that the legal status of bypassing region enforcement varies by country. Some jurisdictions treat region coding as a market-segmentation tool that consumers may work around; others treat circumvention of any technical protection measure as restricted. We cannot give legal advice, and we would simply note that the options above — changing the region through Device Manager, or using a second drive — are unambiguous everywhere.
Option 4: Buy the local edition or stream it
Not satisfying, but worth a sanity check: many films that were once import-only have since been released in other regions or have landed on streaming services. If the disc is fighting you and the movie is available locally for a few euros or dollars, the path of least resistance may not involve the disc at all.
Troubleshooting region problems
”Cannot play this disc — wrong region” on a disc you bought locally
Check the case for the region icon. If the disc is genuinely your local region, the error usually means the drive’s region was set differently at some point — common with second-hand computers and refurbished laptops. Check Device Manager; if you have changes remaining, set it to your local region.
The disc plays in your living-room DVD player but not your PC
Standalone DVD players sold in many countries are effectively region-free or are easily set so by the manufacturer, while PC drives are strictly RPC-2. This mismatch is normal and does not mean your PC is faulty. The options above apply.
”Current Region: Not Selected” and the disc won’t play
A new drive with no region will usually prompt you (or your player software will) to set a region on first use of a region-coded disc. Set it to the region you will use most — this first selection typically does not consume one of the five changes, but every change after it does.
Changes remaining: 0, and it’s the wrong region
The drive is permanently locked. No software setting, Windows reinstall, or firmware trick you should trust will undo it. Replace the drive — an external USB drive is the cheapest route — and set the new drive’s region carefully on first use.
An external drive shows a different region than your internal drive
That is expected. Each drive has its own independent region setting and its own counter. It is also exactly what makes the two-drive setup in Option 2 work.
FAQ
Is it illegal to change my DVD drive’s region?
Changing the region through Device Manager is a built-in, manufacturer-supported function — that is what the setting exists for. The legal questions arise around circumventing region enforcement (resetting counters with firmware hacks, or software bypasses), and the answer varies by country. When in doubt, stick to the supported route.
Can the five-change counter be reset?
Not by any supported means. The counter lives in the drive’s non-volatile memory. Firmware patches that reset it exist for some older drives, but flashing unofficial firmware can permanently destroy the drive and may not be lawful where you live. Treat the counter as fixed.
What is a region-free or “Region 0” disc?
A disc with no region flag set, or with all region flags set. It plays on any drive in any country. Many independent, educational, and concert DVDs ship region-free, as do most home-burned discs.
Do Blu-ray discs use the same regions?
No. Blu-ray uses a separate three-zone system (A, B, C) with different boundaries — and notably, many Blu-rays are released region-free. None of this affects DVD playback, and note that MediaPlay DVD Player plays DVDs only, not Blu-ray discs.
Why does my disc show two region numbers?
Discs can be flagged for multiple regions — “2, 4” is common for European/Australian releases. The disc plays on a drive set to any of its listed regions.
Does Windows 11 handle regions differently from Windows 10?
No. The Device Manager DVD Region tab and the five-change limit are identical on both, because the enforcement happens inside the drive, not in Windows.
Sources
- Microsoft Q&A: DVD region setting and the hardware change limit
- DVD region code background: dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html
- VLC media player: videolan.org
Final takeaway
DVD region codes are a relic of 1990s release schedules, but they are enforced by real hardware in your PC today. The rules are simple once you can see them: every disc has a region, your drive has a region, they must match, and your drive will only change its mind five times in its life. Check the DVD Region tab in Device Manager before anything else, spend your region changes deliberately, and consider a second external drive if your collection genuinely spans two regions.
And once the regions line up, the rest should be easy: insert the disc, open a player that understands DVDs — MediaPlay DVD Player is free from the Microsoft Store and handles standard region playback automatically — and watch your movie.
