DVD can't be read, what to do?
Toyota Solara with Navigation, which means map DVD. Two or 3 years ago, occasionally I'd get an error message when car first started so radio first tries to read the map. I would either stop and start the car, or later I realized I could eject the DVD and reinsert it and it always worked the 2nd time. (There is a separate CD drive for playing music.)
Bought a DVD cleaning DVD, which is a disk with a brush! Used 2 or 3 times. Didn't help.
Changed from the 2005 edition of the map, that came with the car when new, to the 2008 edition, the last year they made one. Didn't help.
Both map DVDs look pristine. No fingerprints, not even old ones that have been wiped away.
In the last month, problem's gotten more frequent, but still worked the
2nd time every time. Yesterday, didn't work until the 3rd time. And today, right after I bought tires for a car trip tomorrow, wouldn't work right at all.
I restarted the map, and the map restarted itself 2 or 3 times** for each time I restarted, and never completely displayed the map, and always insufficent for moving my location while I drive***.
A couple strange things, never happened before today: 1) Start of the day, changing stations, which is usually instantaneous, took 5 or 10 seconds every time. Changing volume, for which there is a knob (although it's not a direct rheostat control) also took 5 or 10 seconds. Changing from FM band 1 to 2 (6 memories each) also took 5 or 10 seconds. Saving presets took 5 or 10 seconds. This delay phenomenon never happened before and I don't see how it's related to not reading the map DVD, but otoh, it's not a coincidence, is it? (Once the radio was on a station, the radio worked fine.) 2) Sometimes**** much of the map showed, but a quadrilateral to the left of center, using about 1/5th of the screen, was dark and blank. But driving didn't move the map. ****Or maybe all the time. Sun was very bright.
How do I fix this?
Is there a better way to clean the head? A more expensive DVD head cleaning CD? Maybe the one I bought didn't know how to work because it was not a general purpose DVD or CD slot, but a dedicated map DVD??? So the radio software was incompatible with, or didn't try to execute, the cleaning DVD software. Maybe NO cleaning CD knows how to work with a Map DVD slot? Or should I disassemble the radio and clean the head directly? (Previous car had a 5-CD changer that broke. Major effort just to get the CDs out, had to destroy the changer mechanism. Never did see the head.)
Should I try cleaning the head again, even if it didn't seem to help the first few times, because clearly now it's worse, so maybe even a partial cleaning will be enough?
Should I use a liquid or solvent on the brush. I think it didn't say to and I didn't last time.
There are junkyard radios, but would they be fully tested? How can they fully test a map that is meant to move when the junkyard car has no engine or tires? And no GPS antennna. I presume the radio is tested, but seriously, do they, can they test the map?
***I've only used navigation twice in 5 years, once in the dark in Charlston, S. Carolina, but I use location all the time.
**Convertible, top down, lots of sun, so hard to see the screen, but I could see between attempts, in the center of the screen was a little clock symbol, and the time on the clock was different each time!!! Curious if there's a pattern, but had to pay attention to the road.
BTW, I just bought two new used tires today, so that I could go on a
4-day car trip tomorrow, and as I was leaving the tire place, or maybe first thing this morning, that's when the map broke! I love my map, especially when wandering around places I've never been before, which was the exact plan for the next 4 days. What irony!
(I've liked maps since I was a little boy, loved them for the last 50 years)