Cd rom drive troubles

hello,

My cd-rom drive is has not working lately, I just put the cd in and I hear loud noises for about 15 minutes and then I can see a icon of the screen and takes another 15 mins to open a folder so as you can imagine I can not run anything. Audio cd's do work tho.I'm running a imac g3 333mhz and os 9.2.2 ( I know getting a new machine soon) any ideas of what might be causing this problem please help thanx in advance.

ps:I have tried blowing many times.

Are the problem CDs CD-Rs or CD-RWs? Older CD drives often have problems with CD-Rs and -RWs. It seems the older lasers are not as responsive to CD-Rs. Have you tried a commercial data CD like an Apple installer disk?

All disks exept audio cause problems and all these cd's worked before. A while ago when this started I was playing Starcraft and I heard a couple scrathes once and a while but nothing major then more and more untill it was unbearable now I can't do anything

It's possible that the laser lens is dirty. That would reduce its sensitivity. You could try one of those cleaner disks. It also could be that the laser is simply giving up. That would have the same symptoms. If you are not ready to move on to another Mac you could try to find a used drive or replace it with an internal CD-RW.

I tried a cleaning disk a while ago but it didn't seem to change aything. I'm gonna get a mac mini soon probaly in 2 or 3 months whens its my brithday its just until then I need some more time wasters. I have lots of my disks backed up on my humongous hd but lots of them can't be fooled and need the real cd.