VLC Player: Windows 10 Lacks a Native DVD Video Player

I don't watch videos on my Windows-based laptop very often, but recently wanted to be able to play DVD videos on a long road trip. Without realizing that Windows 10 had dropped support for playing back video on a DVD, I placed the DVD with a movie in the DVD player and was disappointed when Windows 10 did not know what action to perform on that DVD. When I next had a Wifi connection, I saw that Microsoft had a Windows DVD Player app offered for $15, but I decided to look for third-party alternatives first because the app's average rating is pretty low and I wasn't used to paying extra for an app to play DVD videos.

I found the useful articles How to play DVDs in Windows 10 for free and Windows 10 won't play DVDs unless you pay Microsoft $15. The first article succinctly states, "Windows 10 won't play DVDs natively, and Windows Media Center is gone." The second article reiterates this, "Microsoft chose to omit the Windows Media Center app from Windows 10, and it wants $15 for the new Windows DVD Player."

Both of the articles referenced above referenced the same freely available alternative to Microsoft's Windows DVD Player. The VLC Player is available at http://www.videolan.org/ and the VLC media player was exactly what I was looking for. The VLC media player page describes it as "a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols." The page also highlights that VLC media player plays numerous formats and codecs, is completely free, and "runs on all platforms" including Windows.

Fast Startup is Only Desirable When It's a Complete Startup

After upgrading a Windows 8-based desktop PC to Windows 10, I started seeing the regular error message: "Failed to connect to a Windows service: Windows couldn't connect to the Group Policy Client service. This problem prevents standard users from signing in."

This issue, as the message states, prevented users other than the Administrator from logging in or, if they managed to login, prevented them from doing very much. This was an intermittent issue that seemed to be occurring on an increasingly frequent basis.

I found the fix for this on the Windows 10 Forums thread Can't connect to Group Policy Client service where windowsmith advised turning off "Fast Startup." As documented in The Pros and Cons of Windows 10's "Fast Startup" Mode, "Fast Startup ... doesn’t always work perfectly, and there are some downsides that might convince you to turn it off." Turning off "Fast Startup" has led to a much more positive experience using our Windows 10-based desktop.

Several sites explain how to disable/enable Fast Startup including the post that helped me realize this was the issue I was facing. The gist of the approach is to use Start → Settings → System → Power & sleep → Additional power settings → Choose what the power button does → Shutdown settings → [uncheck] Turn on Fast Startup (recommended). I have "Fast Startup" checked/enabled on my Windows 10-based laptop (came from Windows 7) without any obvious negative issue, but "Fast Startup" seemed to cause far more trouble than any achieved benefit on my Windows 10-based desktop.

Since unchecking/disabling "Fast Startup", I haven't seen the "Windows couldn't connect to the Group Policy Client service" for over a week and I formerly saw it almost daily.

Viewing TCP/UDP Information on Windows

I occasionally need to quickly identify which ports are being used on a Windows-based system. This post briefly summarizes the two approaches I typically use to do this.

The netstat tool is a command-line tool that can be run in the "Command Prompt". I typically like to use the netstat options -n, -a, and -o. The available netstat commands can be viewed on the command line by running "netstate/?"

When I want the ability to easily sort the output, the graphical tool TCPView is handy. Although this often requires a separate download the first time it is run, it is a small tool that is quickly downloaded and easily installed by unzipping it. The executable can then be run by clicking on Tcpview.exe. The graphical tool displays (and allows sorting by) process names, process identifiers (PIDs), protocols, local and remote addresses, local and remote port numbers, and states.

TCPView is provided by the wholly-owned Microsoft subsidiary Windows Sysinternals as part of its Networking Utilities.

When a particular process ID is needed, it can be found through Windows's Task Manager or on the command line with the command tasklist.

Windows Vista User Profile Service Failed

I recently could not login to my account on an old laptop with Windows Vista and was presented with this message: "The User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded." Fortunately, this was easily remedied by following the steps outlined in Microsoft Article 947215 ("You receive a 'The User Profile Service failed the logon' error message"). That article outlines three methods for resolving the issue (fixing the user account profile, copying data to different profile, and deleting the error SID and creating a new profile).

I used the first approach (fixing the user account profile) by following the steps on that article:

1. Restart machine and enter "Safe Mode"
   • Typically done by clicking F8 while restarting and selecting "Safe Mode"
2. Run the Registry Editor (regedit)
   • The registry can optionally be backed up before editing it.
3. Access "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList" folder and then the "S-1-5" subfolders with really long names and containing ProfileImagePath in registry
4. Rename the folder with .bak to not have that extension and rename the one that started without extenson to have .bak extension.
5. Change RefCount's value to zero and change State's value to 0.

After following those steps (which are explained in more detail and illustrated with screen snapshots in the Microsoft Article 947215), closing Registry Editor, and restarting the laptop, I was able to log in again. I took this opportunity to create a separate Administrator account as advised in this Microsoft Community Question.