I tried some compressed air, checked the lens, it looked clean. Is there
something else I need to try in cleaning it? It now seems to be reading
nothing. I have no error messages and drivers appear to be fine.
Like anything else, the lens on your CD/DVD drive/player can get
damaged or more likely dirty, meaning probably just dusty. Because you
can't really see what you're doing that well, compressed air is at
best hit or miss cure. Most of the same companies that make blank
media, like TDK also make special CD/DVD cleaner discs for about $10.
Before you discount them as snake oil try it. I did and it did help.
The disc has two or more tiny and I do mean TINY little brushes glued
on to the surface of the disc, maybe a few bristles that are very
soft. You put this special disc in the drive, most come with software
on the disc and they run for about 5-10 seconds and duh, you get your
DVD/CD lens cleaned. Yep, it really does work.
In a similar vain if it is just some discs that don't play you can try
cleaning them. Again, most of the media companies now offer CD/DVD
cleaners either manual you crank or electric models for about $30.
While they look like toys, again they can work. You generally get two
solutions and two sets of cleaning pads. You put a few drops of
cleaner, spin the disc for about a minute, then repeat after changing
to the polish pads and like magic SOMETIMES discs that refused to play
now will. This method can remove both gunk and small slight scratches.
Most people don't know how to clean CDs or DVDs by hand which you can
also try. Most while they may use one of the special cleaning cloths
make the mistake of going in circular wipes which can be disaster or
they just do it too roughly. NEVER clean a disc this way. The right
way is very gently make a few (literally just a few) passes from the
center out to the edge covering at most about 1/5 of the disc's
surface, then proceed to the next section of the disc until you wipe
the whole thing all the way around.
While scratches can happen, the biggest reason a disc skips or doesn't
play any more assuming there is nothing wrong with the media surface
itself is due to some tiny bit of foreign substance on the bottom side
of the disc, often being caused by you accidentally touching it and
leaving your fingerprints which is enough to deflect the laser beam
just enough to mess things up.
You may not even see the fingerprints or other foreign substances
unless you very carefully under a bright light (indirect sunlight is
best) hits the surface at the right angle as you SLOWLY tilt the disc
and move it about.
Lastly it could be the driver/player simply developed a hardware
problem. Like all hard drives sooner or later fail, so too for all
CD/DVD player/burners. Best test is to see if this has happened is
simply try to play in a DIFFERENT drive/player.
There are still some players, usually the set top variety that refuse
to correctly play certain brands of media or some brands if a certain
type. Some older players refuse to play both +- or refuse to play the
rewriteable kind while playing others alright. Check which brands and
which formats work with your DVD set top players and for what media at
the excellent VCDHelp site which has been around a long time and
contains a wealth of information on every aspect of video burning,
editing, playing, good drives, the bad ones, which media works best,
etc..
http://www.vcdhelp.com