Mac OS X 10.3.6 Special Report: DVD player fails with ATI Radeon 9800

MacFixIt reader Aaron Smith reports that after updating to Mac OS X 10.3.6, DVD player no longer worked. When trying to play DVDs, Apple DVD Player displayed the following error:

"The current machine or system configuration is not supported. [-70013]"

Smith offers the following, fairly involved workaround: "I checked the version of the Apple ATI Drivers installed, and noticed they had been updated from 1.3.28.6 to 1.3.34.7 since the last OS update. Suspecting this version change to be the source of the problem, I first pulled the following files from another Macintosh that had yet to be updated:

• /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon9700.kext
• /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon9700DVDDriver.bundle
• /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon9700GA.plugin
• /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon9700GLDriver.bundle

"Note: Radeon 9700 drivers support (at least) the 9700 and 9800 graphics cards.

"I then opened Terminal on the affected 10.3.6 Macintosh, and executed the following command, which moved all ATI Radeon 9800 driver files to my home directory:

• sudo mv /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon9700* ~/

"I checked the files that had been moved, which included an extra file from the previous Mac OS version:

• ATIRadeon9700VADriver.bundle

"Other systems may or may not have this file (I have yet to update our other Macintosh systems).

"Next, I did a drag-n-drop style move of the 4 older ATI driver files into the /System/Library/Extensions/ folder via the Finder. I was required to authenticate this action by entering my administrative password.

"Finally, to complete the manual downgrade, I ran the following command in Terminal to transfer ownership of the ATI drivers to the root user:

• sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon9700*

"Finally, I rebooted the machine and retested, finding the issue to be resolved for me.""

"While the solution I presented works, it causes another problem with iDVD 4.0 or 4.0.1. While trying to open an iDVD project after downgrading the drivers, I noticed iDVD acted as if nothing happened: the project did not open, and no error messages were displayed. Checking the Console application to check the system logs, I found iDVD was throwing exceptions that were getting ignored. Once I restored the newer Radeon 9700/9800 graphic drivers and rebooted, iDVD worked normally again. However now Apple DVD Player is broken. So users who use both applications will have to pick their poison until Apple comes up with a cure."

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