First off, let me warn you that I do not own a Playstation 2, and I am not absolutely certain as to the precision of my descriptions of the problems I've encountered. The Slim PS2 in question actually belongs to a friend of mine. I'm very sorry if I simple mistakes.

Anyway, on to my post...

My friend has a Slim PS2 that will read what he calls the "silver-backed" discs, but it refuses to read any kind of "gold-backed discs." I don't know much about PS2 DVDs, but the only thing I could figure out for him was that the silver discs were single layer, and the gold discs were dual-layer, and this was why his PS2 wasn't reading certain discs. His console will read regular single layer DVD movies, but it won't read dual-layer, so I assumed that was the problem. He recently purchased Xenosaga I-III, and Xenosaga's II and III (which are both two disc games) work, but Xenosaga (which is only one disc, I'm assuming dual-layer) refuses to work at all. Also, he can only get the PS2 to read any disc by going into "diagnostic mode" from the OS, and then he has to keep the lid open, go into diagnostic mode, load the game, then close the lid. The games (the ones that work, that is) will then load up. At various times during gameplay, however, digital music will stop playing and cutscenes will refuse to load until you open the lid and close it again. I don't know for certain, but these seem like strange problems to me. I tried to open the console myself (I have alot of experience fixing my own electronic devices), but I didn't want to wind up ruining the thing. If you can help me out, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

- Patrick

P.S. If you need model or serial numbers, I can provide them, along with an exact list of games/movies that do and do not work with his console.