XP suddenly refuses to recognize play disc.

[matusmatus 0]

So I get home from work, all excited to play me some SC4, as always. I take out There Will Be Blood (waste of time!) from my only optical drive, pop in the ol' play disc, and windows refuses to recognize it (appears as empty in My Computer). Now this happens from time to time, and some combination of opening/closing the drive again and/or restarting has always fixed it. I suppose it should be noted that I sometimes need to manually open the tray with the paperclip hole, but I've always been able to read the discs once I get them in.

Well it didn't this time. So I tried some other discs, to see if my drive is kaput. Several DVDs and CD-ROMs loaded up just fine, including SC4D disc one. Also, the surface of the disc in question is _totally_immaculate_. It's as if my computer has gained sentience and is using it to intervene on my SC4 habit. I am almost certain that this is not the case.

Last night, I did disable a few windows services in an attempt to optimize my Windows XPerience, but I've since re-enabled all of them to no effect. Other than that, (and There Will Be Blood) I haven't done anything since the last time I simmed it up.

Any ideas? [deleted by tungston] I'm hesitant to reinstall, as I'm afraid that I won't be able to.

Also, I looked through the forums, and saw a few similar problems, but didn't see any threads where explorer wouldn't recognize the disc. I sincerely hope I'm not asking a question that has already been asked, however I need my fix or else I might turn to drugs or stamp collecting.

+++

SC4 Deluxe (came with The Sim City Box) No updates. (Disc says 2008 on it, I assumed it came fully patched.)

XP3

P4 2.8

1GB RAM

2GB Page file

GeForce... 6200?

Lite-On DVD+-RW

EDIT: I forgot to say please and thank you. Please and thank you.

[cirvianum 0]

Good luck!!!

[dajahew2 1]

Immediate problem: Busted disc. I'm sorry, but you may have to buy a new SC4 disc. ;(

If you get this problem with discs, it means they have too many scratches, and the laser doesn't recognise the disc.