I opened it up and cleaned the lens, moved the white gear around (though I din't try every position), and cleaned the tracks the laser rides on, but I'm still getting disc read errors. Also, it's been through the school of hard knocks the last few months, my roomate got a dog and he occasionaly runs into the controller wire, so it's fallen about about a foot a couple of times. Any advice?

Seriously, just pop the disc in, flip it upside down and press the reset button so it starts reading from scratch. This solves my problem 75% of the time. I have NO idea why, but it really works.

Also, blue backs are a nightmare as are old PS1 games. I absolutely have to turn it upside down *every time* I use one of those.

If you go to gamefaqs.com they have a whole section for various hardware, too, with some fixes that include adjusting laser strength which I haven't done myself. You might get some help there, though.

hxxps://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/case/ps2

and bought one of the $150 new smaller PS2s. I'd had enough with opening it up and doing everything you mentioned. I will say this, every game that used to give me disc read errors and even some of the scratched/discdoctored ones that would NEVER play, play like they were brand new now.

My old PS2 was one of the original 250,000 or so that first came out in the US, so it was ancient in console years. Begging for an upgrade basically, and luckily I got a Best Buy gift certificate so I ended up not paying the entire $150.

Seriously though, the thing is TINY now, with a built in ethernet port and USB ports, and fliptop rather than a disctray.

The only other course of action for you if you want to keep it, would be to get a can of compressed air from Compusa/Bestbuy and spray the fuck out of every crevice on the PS2, the fan in the back, the holes in the front, etc.

...it worked like new for about a week ..then died completely ..like the ps2 was rejecting a new body part or sumthin