DVD-ROM drive slipping problem

[blazingcheese]

I'm having problems getting my Liteon LD163 DVD-ROM drive to spin-up discs when I put them in the drive. I can hear the disc slipping when the drive starts turning. After a while, the drive gives up trying to get the disc to spin properly.

If the disc does spin up, it plays just fine. This doesn't happen often though, and seemingly at random.

This happens to both rented discs that are a little worn, and brand new discs that I own. CD-ROM's never have this problem.

Does anyone else have problems like this? Any solutions? I'm running Windows XP on a 1.7 GHz Pentium 4 w/ 512 megs of ram. TIA.

[setarip]

It may be a simple matter of running a DVD/CD cleaning CD for two minutes. Maxell makes one that retails for approximately $10 U.S. (Make certain that the package states "DVD/CD" and not merely "CD").

If that doesn't do the trick, and your player has a two laser (one fpr DVDs and the other for CDs) configuration, the laser may be out of alignment - which typically results in buying a new drive - because it costs less than the repair...