Usually the owner of such a machine must install the OS, drivers and repeat that about a dozen times before they admit it could be an aging drive. I'm very patient about such, but do try a CD/DVD lens cleaner and find out what the new drive will cost.
Bob
I have a Toshiba Satellite A35 notebook, which I have had for 16 mos. Recently, the hard drive was replaced and Windows XP SP2, InterVideo WinDVD4, and drivers were installed. Since then the drive will recognized data disks, most audio disks, but when it comes to commercial DVD's it is a crap-shoot whether it will recognize and open it. I have run disk cleaner, uninstalled and re-installed the drive, drivers, and applications--no change. If it was more universal in not recognizing disk, I would just replace the drive. Is there any known fixes for this kind of problem?

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