[i]Just downloaded this as all i want to do watch the occasional DVD on the computer. My question is can i turn it off till i need it to play a DVD.

I did not download all the bells and whistles that come with the program just the DVD player, the reason i ask is that i was looking for a new MP3 on Amazon and kept getting a box pop up from AVS wanting to play something, you can get rid of the box in a couple of clicks but it's annoying.

Have looked on their support page but can find nothing, as i said earlier all i want to do is play a DVD so if someone has an alternative to AVS i will give that a go.

Windows xp home
Service pack 2 (pack 3 messes with settings)

For a quick, no frills, hassle free, free program, VLC Media player is "Very popular" and will also show sub titles if available.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

I'll second that. VLC Player is a good choice for free multimedia player.

Thanks for the information about VLC, i had a good trawl round and found i could download a copy of this onto a USB stick so i thought what the hell i will give it a go, took a while even though i am on cable broadband.

Worked absolutely brilliantly, i can even fiddle with all settings (i may even learn something) without having to worry about anything because if i get in to much of a muddle i could just delete it and re load without affecting anything on the computer.

Once again many thanks.

Glad to hear you now have things sorted.
However, it's only 16MB and just took me 30 seconds to download, although there is also a 25MB download.
Possibly also depends on the time of day you downloaded it.

Good luck.

Must have been the wrong time of day when i downloaded then, mind you i only have the smallest package from ntl so that might explain it.

Have found one strange thing though, it will not allow many of the features or will not recognise chapter skipping if i plug it into my hub, plugged directly into the front or back ports no problem all works fine.