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Can you play a DVD or Blu-ray Disc encoded to play in the geographical region location of Somalia on your system manufactured in the U.S.A.? Why sure you can. To do so, however, you have to change the region code on your DVD or Blu-ray Disc player to match Somalia (5 or B, respectively, in case you’re curious). You can only change the region code on your player four times. After that, you get stuck with whatever was the last-used region code. Today, most optical discs are sold region free, meaning you can play them anywhere. Many optical-media devices are set to play only discs encoded for the region in which they were sold or manufactured. You can easily check and set your device’s current region code under the hardware properties of your optical device in any version of Windows. As either a technician or home enthusiast, you should be familiar with the following optical device and media region codes.

DVD Region Codes:

REGION 0 All regions

REGION 1 USA, Canada

REGION 2 Europe, Japan, Middle East, South Africa, Greenland

REGION 3 South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Areas of Southeast Asia

REGION 4 Australia, New Zealand, Central and South America

REGION 5 Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa

REGION 6 China

REGION 7 Reserved for special and future use

REGION 8 Reserved for cruise ships and airlines

Blu-ray Disc Region Codes:

A East Asia (China and Mongolia excluded), Southeast Asia, Americas, and their dependencies

B Africa, Southwest Asia, Europe (except Russia), Oceania, and their dependencies

C Central Asia, East Asia (China and Mongolia only), South Asia, central Eurasia (including Russia), and their dependencies

Practical Application

Troubleshooting Removable Media

Floppy disk drives, flash memory, and optical drives are fairly robust devices that rarely require troubleshooting due to an actual hardware failure. Most problems with removable media stem from lack of knowledge, improper installation, abuse, and incorrect use of associated applications. There’s no way to repair a truly broken flash memory—once a flash card dies you replace it—so let’s concentrate on troubleshooting floppy drives and optical drives.

Floppy Drive Maintenance and Troubleshooting

No single component fails more often than the floppy drive. This is not really that surprising because floppy drives have more exposure to the outside environment than anything but the keyboard. Only a small door (or in the case of 5¼-inch drives, not even a door) divides the read/write heads from dust and grime. Floppy drives are also exposed to the threat of mechanical damage. Many folks destroy floppy drives by accidentally inserting inverted disks, paper clips, and other foreign objects. Life is tough for floppy drives.

In the face of this abuse, the key preventative maintenance performed on floppy drives is cleaning. You can find floppy drive cleaning kits at some electronics stores, or you can use a cotton swab and some denatured alcohol to scour gently inside the drive for dust and other particles.

If cleaning the drive doesn’t help, try replacing the suspect disk with another one to see if the floppy drive itself is bad. If it turns out that your floppy drive won’t read any disks, it’s time to replace the drive.

Troubleshooting Optical Drives and Discs

Optical drives are extremely reliable and durable PC components. At times, however, a reliable and durable device decides to turn into an unreliable, nondurable pile of plastic and metal frustration. This section covers a few of the more common problems with optical drives and discs—installation issues, burning issues, and firmware updates—and how to fix them.

Installation Issues

The single biggest problem with optical drives, especially in a new installation, is the connection. Your first guess should be that the drive has not been properly installed in some way. A few of the common culprits are forgetting to plug in a power connector, inserting a cable backward, and misconfiguring jumpers/switches. Although you need to know the type of drive,