I got a decent MP3/CD Discman a few months ago. Worked great. Then today, for no apparent reason, I popped in a disc and pushed play. It spun and spun and spun, and then stopped, reading “No disc”. I thought it might be my CD so I tried another, and another. It did it with all of them, both MP3 CD’s and regular audio CD’s. I made sure the case was closed all the way. I thought the laser might be dirty so I put in a laser-cleaning disc but it didn’t make any improvement. Thought it might be batteries dying, so I put in new ones, and tried an adaptor also. No luck. Tried playing it with ESP on/off, also no luck. I know I hadn’t dropped it or hit it at any time, so I don’t know what could be causing it.
Any ideas as to what’s up with it? Should I just trash it and get a new one?
Could be a dirty lens. AFAIK, those “cleaning” discs are more or less useless. Depending on the design of your player, you should be able to see the lens that focuses the laser. Try brushing it off with a clean soft paintbrush, or better still one of those compressed air sprays.
One of my old CD players (not a portable one) exhibited the same symptoms, and I just took it apart and reassembled it. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this though, as (a) you will invalidate the warranty if it still has one, and (b) it may have some “hot” parts inside even when switched off, although I’d have thought this was less likely with a battery powered device.
no real help to offer here, but the same thing happened to my first DVD player… which was a cheap little thing. The warranty people wanted me to pay to ship it in… and I couldn’t get at the cleaning lens myself or anything, so I just upgraded it, I’m using a portable model now.
Assming it’s out of warranty and given the near zero probability of end user servicable repair being effective, and the the near 100% probability of the cost of a professional repair being more than the value of the unit. Yes.
Here’s the RepairFAQ general CD trouble shooting pages. Definitely avoid so-called lens cleaning discs. The FAQ tells you how to do it right.
Note: Be very careful using compressed air around CD pickups. The mounting for the lens is very fragile and can be easily damaged by the strength of such an air blast. Bulb blowers like photographers use are much better for this.
There is no real danger of shock from a portable CD player. But doing stuff to it with power applied is not a good idea, you can short something out. Take out the batteries and remove any power adapter before starting work. There is a standard warning about the laser of course.
(My recent portable CD tale. Bought one for 25cents at a garage sale. Gave no disc message. Opened it up and some sort of sugary stuff was all over. Literally washed the pc board. Still no go. Started doing some adjustments. Now it works. A complete waste of my time of course, but that’s what hobbies are for.)
