So I have a brand new hp laptop. I put in a DVD yesterday and it says the region is not supported. It asks me if I want to change the region. This is strange to me because this is a U.S. DVD and the laptop should be set to region 1, right? I figure it hasn't been set yet so I go ahead and let it change the region. I did this with the disc in the drive. (come to think of it, it didn't actually tell me what region it was changing it to, but I assumed 1)
It played my DVD just fine. Then I shut off my computer and when I turn it on the next day it won't even recognize that there is a disk in the drive. Device manager says:

"Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)"

It's like I don't have a DVD drive anymore. The drivers are up to date and I tried enabling and disabling it. I am cautious of switching the region again but I don't see how that would solve my issue anyway.

I'm panicking here! This is a brand new laptop!

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

Sounds like you need to make a trip back to the dealer. If you bought it over the Internet, maybe you got a PC with a DVD drive set up for another region.

I have resolved the problem! I contacted HP online support and I chatted online with a tech support person probably in India because she had shaky English. She had me uninstall the driver, restart, and windows automatically reinstalled it. Then I deleted the upper and lower filters for the drive, and restarted again. Now my drive shows up, is functional, and is configured for region 1!

It's odd that the DVD configuration wasn't set up right in the first place, but at least the tech had the right information to get your DVD running.

removing the upper and lower filters are what usually fixes this problem and they are added to the registry by burning software like Roxi cd creator and others ,to the best of my knowledge .