I hope someone can help me out. I recently purchased a Pioneer 116VAR DVD Rom off eBay and all it came with was the Rom itself. So, I took my CD drive out and hooked up the cables from my CD rom to my DVD rom in the same places. I put a regular CD in and it will work, and the little light comes on on the drive, so I know it's installed correctly, however, when I try to run a DVD, it gives me an "Please insert disk into drive D" error. I downloading a program called Cliprex DS DVD Player, but it won't play them either. (I may be doing something wrong with the program.) When I go into Windows control panel to see hardware that has recently been installed, it says that "device is working properly". So, I'm stumped. Do I need a decoder, or a driver for this thing, or what? And where can I get one free? It came with no software. Hopefully someone can help. Thanks in advance, MrsBooker

I know some of the older ones required a PCI decoder card. I'm not sure about yours. If it's fairly new. Then I'd say that's not the case. Maybe a firmware upgrade. Pioneer firmware page

I don't know of any good free DVD players but I do know that "Power DVD" software is a good choice. Hope this helps.