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I've been researching over the net and found people with similar problems but not exactly the same. Basically my PS2 will sometimes make a kind of scratching (like "dzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz") sound when it is turned on. I put a disc in and it will often make a clunky scratching noise. With some games the sound will go away and it will load up and run fine (eg. rugby 2006, nascar 06, NHRA). However it seems with more intensive games (such as madden 06, smackdown vs raw 2006), it may load up but then make those clunky noises and freeze up. Sometimes the disc will just start reading again after some time but I can actually get it going again by hitting the right side of the console. Everything tells me that the lens must be fine (as it can read the disc), so something else inside must be out of place? I've heard about the arm that holds the lens running out of lubrication? Anyone got any ideas? thanks in advance

That happens to me too...after inserting my Codebreaker DVD, its starts making this zzzzzzz sound.At first I thought the Reading Lens is scraping against the CD but when I examined the CD there was no scrathes...

What you're hearing is probably the stepper motor which moves the optical assembly. Depending on how old it is, if it's dirty, the speed of the stepping pulses, etc., it can make an awful racket. Old 5.25" floppies were particularly noisy. Some harddrives advertise how quiet they've made their stepping.

The old C64 floppy used to not check for track 0 on step-out commands, so you got extra noise as the head assmebly banged against the end-stop. A few ingenious folks made a music player which used the noise of the heads banging against the end stop by sending step-outs at various rates. While making a C64 floppy play music this way is interesting, it was also hard on the drive. They usually quit reading disks after playing music in this manner. :)