Fix a Scratched CD
As long as the foil on a CD is not harmed, it is theoretically possible to play the CD. Before you start working on a skipping CD, make sure the problem isn't just with your CD player. You can clean the lense of your player with a Q-tip and some rubbing alchohol. Make sure you don't get any of the rubbing alchohol any place but on the lense. Exercize caution if your CD player is inordinately expensive. Try this at your own risk. But if it won't play anything or skips repeatedly on on a CD that every other player does fine with, a dirty lense may be the culprit. Now take a moment to check your sanity to make sure your CD isn't all covered with gunk. If you've got hot chocolate dried on to it, duh, of course it's skipping. Clean it off and consider embracing sobriety. Your disk is fine. So if you've made sure that your CD is actually hosed, or you can see huge scratches on the surface, we can get down to fixing it. Cds can have "good" scratches and bad scratches. A bad scratch is one that throws off the laser tracking. You will not have troubles from CDs for any other reason besides the foil being damaged or the laser tracking being thrown off.
The trick to reparing a CD is to replace all the bad scratches with good scratches. Head to the bathroom. Rinse off your disk with some water. Hot or cold doesn't matter. Now get some toothpaste on your finger. You need the white scratchy kind, not that gell stuff. It has to be abrasive. Locate the section of disk containing bad scratches. What you want to do is run your finger along the radius of the disk over the bad scratch. You need to score deeper than the bad scratch. As long as you're not hitting foil, you're fine. So run your finger along the radius a bit. Turn the disk slightly. Repeat. Rinse off the toothpaste with more water. Dry the Cd with a soft cloth or a bath towel or waterver, again, running the towel along the radius. Pop that disk into a CD player and see if it's gotten better. You may need to repeat this procedure a few times, especially, if the scratches are gouged in.
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