Just installed a new old stock Matshita UJ262 in my Dell Latitude E6530. Windows says the drive has no region set.
Is there a way to set it to be region free instead of setting a specific region?
Not likely without custom (patched) firmware, there is none for this model, and the folks doing that are no longer active.
If you need out-of-region DVD playback the best approach is a filter driver like AnyDVD-HD.
I was hoping there’s a way to force it to set region free since it’s factory fresh and isn’t set to any region.
The region will automatically be set to match the first region-encoded disc that you play.