Blocking writes to DVDs

About a month ago, I was helping a customer by creating a FileSure rule to block writing to CD/DVD drives. Since the customer request occurred while I was visiting the in-laws, I used my personal laptop to define the rule.

Now, a month later, I decided to try out the Blu-Ray player on the laptop. I slapped in Planet Earth and started up WinDVD BD. spin, spin, spin….nothing. hmmm? Windows Explorer can read the disk just fine, but the WinDVD player can’t.

Reboot, reinstall WinDVD, etc… no matter what I tried, WinDVD just wouldn’t work.

Now, I’m getting serious and I start up FileSure to see there is something weird happening. As soon as I start it, the real-time monitor fills up with red lines indicating access is being denied! FileSure is blocking WinDVD access to the disk!?

Upon closer inspection, WinDVD is trying to access the DVD with WRITE access. What in the world are they thinking? Write access to play a DVD?!

Well, no matter, I turned off the block writes rule and now I’m enjoying Planet Earth is beautiful High Definition.