Hi,

my dvd+-dual etc etc. writer of my laptop,
(purchased in Feb. 2005, 1/2 year old, 3 years warranty !,)
started to have problems in recognizing empty DVd+R discs.

Matshita UJ831-S

And got problems in writing those, it recognized, mismatches in bitcomparing files.

well, I thought cleaning lense could help.
I tried it myself with alcohol, Iso-Propanol to be exact, which I put on a stick, with which you normally clean your ears, lol

well, after some shock, as the drive did nothing at first, I waited longer, the liquid vapored completely, and the drive recognized now the dvd+r 's, which it refused before.
Burning now, and checking the results ok.

Interesting difference:
Now the drive reads faster than before, like when it was fresh new. starting with 3.3 speed, going up to 8x speed (max. speed) at end of dvd+r, when it started dirty only at 2.2x speed, and went max. 3.x speed.


Your experiences in cleaning lenses ?

I bought a five year old Pioneer DVD player on eBay. Old top model, originally priced at $1300. It worked ok for a few months, then it began experiencing read problems. I called the service center and they told me, that it could cost $400-500 to fix it, if it needed a new lens. Since I played only $200 for it, I decided to clean it myself the same way you did. I was somewhat successful. It plays most discs now without problems.

In my stereo system I have an old Philips Audio Cd player, It has around 15 years old. One day this CD player didn't work more. I opened it, but, I couldn't see nothing bad; even the lens apparently clean and transparent. As the CD player already were damaged, I decided to clean the lens with alcohol and a stick; like a desperate solution.

My surprise was that now my CD player was working perfectly, as the first day. A simple stick with alcohol fixed it.

After this, I decided to clean the lens of a CD-ROM Lite-ON with some problems of reading. The problems also were fixed.

I have a special CD with a little brush on its underside, designed for dry lens cleaning. I haven't yet used it with or without success.
Alcohol on the lenses seems a bit scary to me, I'd try the dry stick first.

Isn't that something which can decalibrate the lens?

Maybe ? What precisely do you mean by "decalibrate" ?

I have an old DVD player TEAC. Somehow it stopped playing DVDs. Just after loading DVD it spins it and spins and the LED is blinking forever and nothing happens. CDs are OK. I tried cleaning the lens - no good results.

de Mon:
Just to be sure, you're talking about a computer drive ?

Yes

I'd connect the drive to a second computer to ensure that it's no driver or software problem.

Re CD with cleaning brush: I have used one to clean two playback CD/DVD players. It fixed the problem on both of them and they have read DVDs they could not read before. I have yet to try it on my Lite-On in my computer as it seems to be working fine. Again, it cleaned up the read problems on my stand-alone CD/DVD players.