Ok it rolled me back to WMP 9

But my drives are seeing some of the dvds I am trying.

but still won't play them get this message with real player & a similar one from WMP 9 -
[The DVD cannot be played. Key exchange for DVD copy protection failed.]

the 2 that are at least showing in the drives now are green mile & class reunion - I didn't try them with wmp 11.
so going to try reinstalling 11 and see what happens.

I was going to try wmp 10 - but it says not compatible with my version of XP on the MS website.