Hi Bill,
Thank you for the video. That helped a lot in analyzing the problem. I have provided some answers below which contributes to problems like these. If the player has been a few years old already, one of the major cause of the problem could be a accumulation of dirt, failing drive mechanism, or weak lens. please have time to check on the details below:
1. Chances are real good that the laser lens has gone out or is too weak to read the disk. You have mentioned though that sometimes it picks up and then you get the error. It's a maticelous procedure to calibrate a laser lens. It may just need to be replaced. Anyway you can try cleaning them:
- If your player is not reading any discs at all though (or the cleaning does not help), then try purchasing a can of compressed air (available at Staples, or Wal-Mart). Open the CD drawer, or remove the cover of the player by removing the screws on the sides and rear of the unit. Then spray the can approximately 10" from the lense itself to blow any dust off of it.
- If it still does'nt work, you can opt to clean the lense eye itself, by using isopropyl alcohol, and a link-free cloth to gently wipe the "eye". Then use a dry spot on the cloth to buff the eye clean. If the CD player is still not reading discs, then the eye or transport mechanism is faulty and would need to be replaced.
2. Another cause for the failing mechanism are the belts. Even if the belts are intact, there would still glitches in the mechanism (CD feeding in and out the disk drive). This is due to the belt in the disk drive being dirty or stretched out. With this the mechanism can't inject far enough for the laser assembly to come up properly far enough for a good laser alignment therefore giving you the disk read error or spitting out the cd back to the tray as I noticed on your Video. I've had the same problem with CD drives on DVD players and old CD changers and the above solutions worked out quite well. But I haven't worked on one of these devices yet but its worth a try.
- You can clean these drive belts with alchohol and put them back in. While it's out check the belt for cracks. If there are any replace it. Or if it seems stretched out, which you can tell when it's around the pulleys, replace it. This belt is located in the front and under side of the disk drive assembly.
3. As a last thought though may not be the major cause of the problem, there may be a swollen capacitor on one of the circuit boards that may be causing the problem. A cap swells and shorts out. If so it will need to be replaced. I've had single swollen caps keep an entire system from working.
I hope doing the steps mentioned above works well. I'll try do do more researching on this issue but in the meantime you can try the steps and see if this fixes the problem. Please let me know.
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