Vista - WinDVD and PowerDVD on same machine

Back in my XP and Win2k days I learned quickly that having both WinDVD and PowerDVD on the same machine caused more problems than it was worth.

These days I am running a Dell Studio 17 laptop with Vista Ultimate on it. The Dell pre-loaded DVD apps (Which are based on WinDVD) work ok, but I'd like to have PowerDVD installed as well.

Can anyone advise if having both PowerDVD and WinDVD on Vista will cause issues?

Thanks!

Hi JWhipple,

I haven't tried this in Vista as I use the built-in support that is available in Ultimate to play DVDs. I have, however, used both in XP without problems. What you could do is to try it out to see what happens (create a restore point first, then you have something to go back to if it doesn't work).
Just curious as to why Dell chose to include DVD playback software when Vista Ultimate already has support for this media built-in. The only reason that I might opt for one of these programs is if I decide in future to upgrade to HD or BluRay and I find that I need one of them in order to decode the disk content (assuming, of course, that Vista itself is unable to do so).

My reason for wanting to have PowerDVD is that you can specify a folder to play the DVD from instead of from the DVD drive. Since I travel with my PC I tend to copy the contents of a few DVDs to the hard drive before each trip so I can have something to watch without bringing the discs. . I'd like to be able to do this on the new laptop.

If there is a way to play a DVD from a folder in WMP or WMC, please, let me know !