Wow! This is a pretty bad problem LOL!!
Mel you can hook up your DVD player to your tv. Use the yellow, red, and white RCA plugs. Just make sure your using the video and audio out on the DVD, and video, audio in on the tv.
Sounds to me that your computer guy partitioned your hard drive which will give you another drive making 2 or more on one hard drive. A lot of times I do this for people also, and what I put on the partitioned drive is an image of the C drive. This way if anything happens to the C drive you can go to the partition and bring your C drive back to what it was on day one.
You should ask the computer guy if this is what he did, and have him show you how to use it. Some computer guys dont like to let that info out because you have to bring it in every time something goes wrong, and then he just uses the information stored on the partition to bring back the C drive to the image he installed. Which is what you had when you turned it on the first day after bringing it home. Then they charge for fixing it again.
One thing you can do is uninstall media player 11, then install media player 10, then use the link he gave you for the codec which works for media player 10. Just remember you did this so when your windows has updates, make sure you dont just let windows update automatically. First see what the updates are and uncheck the media player 11 update. Usually you will only have to do this one time, but each time you look at what windows wants to update you will see it, but it should remain unchecked.
I never let windows update automatically because there is a lot of things you do not really need. The most important things you do want is the defender updates, and any that would update your explorer if you use that.
You might try this media player
http://majorgeeks.com/Best_Media_Player_d6220.html
You can also browse the multimedia selections at that website, but I would definitely go see your computer guy and ask
1. Did he put a image of your C drive, or recovery information on one of those partitions. If he didnt then..
2. Ask him if he would image the c drive on one of the partitions, and show you how to use it to recover your C drive.
3.Ask him how many partitions you now have, and what are on those partitions if anything.