Trouble in Windozeland

I have a problem with my Dull laptop. It is owned by my church; I have it to make PowerPoint sides on. The problem is that it has a DVD drive, but it will not read DVDs. You would think no problem, just download a "decoder", not so.

1st try: Toshiba
Toshiba says its DVD drives don't need special drivers; That they are included in Windoze. XP plays CDs fine, but don't have a DVD decoder.

2nd try: Dull (a.k.a. Dell)
Dull has firmware updates to download, but they only work in Win98 and 2000. My laptop has XP pro, so that probably will not work.

3rd try: Micro$oft
Windoze Media Player's page has link to three decoder, but they cost $15-$20 each. The laptop was donated to my church, and the person who bought it paid for a DVD drive, so why should I have to pay 15 dollars to use a feature that should be usable with the drive.

Sorry for the rant. If you have any leave your comment or ideas to fix this.