I had this problem with Playstation 2 Slim. Your advice to clean the optical disk drive lens worked great. One note: on the slim the cleaning is easy as you do not have to take it apart. On the PS2 Slim they switched from a DVD tray drive to a flip top DVD drive. So all I had to do was press the button to open it, reach in with an alcohol moistened Q-tip (not too wet) and give it a few wipes, let it dry and it started reading DVDs again. Thanks much!