I just bought a CD Scratch Repair Kit. I had a few CDs that used to skip a lot, usually about 75% of the way through (never toward the beginning of the CD; don’t know why). I followed the instructions as well as I could.
It’s got two bottles, some cleaning cloths, and a little CD holder. It told me to put a few drops of the first solution on the CD, which has hard to do since it was a paste even after shaking vigorously. Then buff it off with a cloth, and use the spray, and polish that off with a different cloth.
Looking at the CDs aftewards, the scratches were definitely harder to see. I did four CDs without testing any of them, which was probably unwise because…
Now my CD player won’t read three of them! It just spins and spins even after you hit stop. It only stops when you hit eject, and even then the CD is still spinning when it opens.
What can I do? Is there a CD Scratch Repair Kit Repair Kit or something? Should I just wipe them down again? Harder? Or will rubbing them harder just make more scratches? Could it be a problem with the CD player? Like, the laser isn’t strong to blast through the layer of scratch repair goop, but a good CD player would have no trouble?
I just hope the solution isn’t a trip to a music store…
First thing first: Never rub around the CD. Rub in straight lines starting from the center of the disk and going out to the edge. Repeat until you’ve gone completely around the disk.
Also, dont let that solution sit on the CD for very long. It’s more or less eating away at the plastic and if left on too long can cloud it up enough to make it unreadable.
Third: I don’t know about Oregeon, but in Philadelphia there’s a used CD store called Disc-Go-Round that has a machine which will buff off a fraction of a millimeter of the CDs backing. In most cases it’s enough to illiminate any scratches. See if you can find something like that near you…although Seattle will probably be the closest place, you may get lucky in Portland.
The kit basically tries to get you to polish the disc with finer & finer cloths, until you are theoretically back to a non-scratched surface. The last cloth you should end up with looks like one of those very soft cloths used for shoe polishing.
Several problems arise. First, it’s impossible to guarantee that the polishing will do the trick. The scratches might be too deep, or they might be circular scratches (concentric to the edge of the disc). In both cases the disc is probably shot and polishing won’t help at all.
In your case (the problem got worse), I suspect you may have rubbed too hard and generated heat, which could have turned the CD’s protective layer slightly opaque. If the disc won’t even queue up, you’ve damaged the table of contents (the innermost “track” on the disc closest to the center hole). Or you may have rubbed in a circular motion as per TridCloudwalker, when you should rub radially out from the center (like spokes on a bicycle wheel).
I bet there’s an advisory or disclaimer on the kit telling you that you may do more harm than good.
On a related note: Is there some free/cheap software out there that can easily remove skips on the soft copy? I have a couple of hard to find CDs I must preserve! I don’t want to copy the damn skips.
Have you tried playing the cds in another cd player? How old is your cd player? The laser on older models (many years old) don’t read as well as the newer ones.
Cd players are designed to tolerate a surprising amount of radial scratching. If you look at your cds you’ll notice that’s what the scratch kits does. It takes off a thin layer of plastic but leaves that ‘radial scratching’. That’s what the pretty pattern on the bottom is. I can’t say the same for older players though.
I recently got a Skipdoctor and used it on a few cds. It no longer skips when I play them in my car. However, on this old cd player I have they don’t pick up at all.
One last tip. Have you read the manual all the way through? It should have a troubleshooting guide in there.
Lots of good advice. I remember the part about not rubbing circularly, only rubbing radially. I did that part right.’
As to the manual, there wasn’t really any manual. It was about four lines of instructions on the cardboard back to the kit.
I got one of those little CD lens cleaners with the little brushes on it a while back. I have used every now and then for about six months and I can’t really tell if it’s having any affect.
I tried one of the CDs out on my CD-ROM drive and it seemed to work pretty well. I hope it’s just the CD player, since I’m thinking about getting another one one of these days.