My girlfriend locked the region on her iBook DVD drive

[Amber]

She's locked it to region 1. It's a Region 2.

From reading I see it can't be fixed and VLC doesn't work on hers either. It's a 1.44ghz I'm pretty sure.

Her choices are either an external DVD player (any suggestions in the UK?) or buy R1 DVDs.

She has Applecare for another 1.5 years so flashing the firmware is out of the question. Any other way to get around it?

 

[mkrishnan]

She has Applecare for another 1.5 years so flashing the firmware is out of the question. Any other way to get around it?

The lock exists at the firmware level, so I don't think there really are any major options (besides the ones you listed or perhaps getting a new internal drive and installing it). I personally would doubt that flashing it would come back to haunt you, though. I would do that if I were you / your girlfriend.

 

[applemacdude]

She's locked it to region 1. It's a Region 2.

From reading I see it can't be fixed and VLC doesn't work on hers either. It's a 1.44ghz I'm pretty sure.

Her choices are either an external DVD player (any suggestions in the UK?) or buy R1 DVDs.

She has Applecare for another 1.5 years so flashing the firmware is out of the question. Any other way to get around it?

ask apple to set it to the region you want

 

[maxrobertson]

I'm not sure about this, but it might help if you completely reset the parameter RAM. I think you can do that by holding down command + option + O + F when you boot up, and typing in reset-nvram and enter and reset-all and enter, then mac-boot and enter.

 

[aquajet]

Ask Apple to see if they can do something for you. Otherwise, your only options are to replace the drive or use an external DVD drive. There isn't an RPC1 firmware available and resetting the PRAM/NVRAM won't do a darn thing.