Funny that you mentioned this.. I used your howto in another thread to try and rip movies for my iphone using VLC but never got it to work. To be fair i played with it for an hour one night and gave up :).

The error definately, 100% has to do with me trying to use the HP2335 monitor with a DVI cable. The monitor is not compliant according to a few different threads i have read where people have the same issue. The laptop will play a DVD fine when its not docked.

Its not a big deal. I changed some things around and now i have directv & dvd being switched with receiver. I had an old sony receiver and a denon DVD player that were pulled from upgrade jobs so it didnt cost me anything. I wanted to add a couple of speakers anyway. The computer speakers arent very good.