Vista - Help! No sound when I play DVD's

Hello, I am new to all this! I have a 2.5 yr old Compaq Presario laptop OS Windows Vista Basic 32 bit. It has no problems, free of malware and viruses. mainly for young children use and my pictures/music. It plays MP3 & CD's no problem. Burning a cd with wmp is no problem. It has Quicktime on it and it plays DVD's w/out a problem, but it is too soft, my kids can barely hear it, esp. if on a plane or in the car. I want to use my Windows media player but while it plays my cd's and mp3's without a problem, there is not sound, only the movie playing, when I play DVD's. Can anyone help me figure out how to either turn up the sound on my Quicktime and/or get my WMP working? Thanks!!
SweetLew

Wlecome to the forum!

Low volume audio on DVD playback can be caused by many different things.
I will try to list all the possibilities and their solutions.

1. Volume in playback software (quicktime/WMP) is too low.
Try looking for volume slider(s) in the software and crank those up

2. windows audio volume is too low.
Click on the speaker icon in the lower right corner of screen on start bar and drag
the slider up

3. wrong DVD audio track played over stereo speakers.
If you are playing a DVD that has multiple audio track choices try different ones and
see which one gives the loudest/best volume. I have personally experienced that
playing 5.1 tracks (dolby digital/DTS) over stereo speakers can have many undesired
effects such as overall low volume or high background/music but low voices.
This is due to the playback software not properly being able to convert the 5.1 audio
into stereo audio. If changing audio tracks doesnt work I highly recommend getting
different playback software that properly converts it.
Your ideal solution would be Media Player Classic:
Free-Codecs.com :: Download Media Player Classic 6.4.9.1 : Media Player Classic is an enhanced version of Media Player 6.4

I hope this helps,

Good luck!

Well, thank you for your quick reply!

I have tried using the sliders. For Quicktime, the slider is all the way to 100, but still too soft. It is up to date, too, having done an update just today.
Volume sliders with wmp works with cd's and mp3's, but not with dvd's, there is no sound whatsoever.
My issue is that I am scared to download anything, worried that it will screw with other things on my laptop. How can I be sure that the download you have recommended won't mess up anything else? I have had issues with downloads on my business pc and have a fear of unknown downloads.
Thanks!

Your fear is perfectly understandable.

The great thing about that download I linked to you is that it is a single file mediaplayer (just one executable (.exe) nothing else). It doesn't need to install, make registry values or anything!

If you don't like it you can simply delete the .exe and its gone from your computer!

I can't guarantee that using it will solve your problem though. It might be something unrelated to your playback software (seeing as it occurs in BOTH quicktime and WMP).