Safe to use laser lens cleaner?

As a general piece of advice, always use Apple's 1-year warranty while you can before attempting DIY procedures. If you purchased in October of last year, all manufacturing defects are covered until October of this year (08). Try talking to them because this seems like a defect. My old iBook's drive worked for over 3 year with alot of newbie abuse (my first apple mac) and it works fine and was never "cleaned" or replaced with these kinds of products. Try going to the apple store and talking with them about the issue, maybe bring a brand new dvd still in shrink wrap and using that dvd as a test case. Good luck!

Hello! I would like to ask you, the same question as kfunque did. It is safe to use a laser lens cleaner with my MacBook Pro? And if yes, what brand do you propose?

I have a problem with my DVD drive. I can not burn anything...

Thank you in advance for your help!

I've often wondered the same thing! Depending on the environment the machine is used in, the lens in the optical drive is sure to eventually collect dust. I occasionally use one on my CD and DVD players. They both have disc trays and not the "slot" type used in the iMac.

Theoretically, there should be no reason why such a cleaner shouldn't be used. After all they're nothing more than a disc with a brush attached!

Orthodox answer: No, it's NOT safe on a slot-loading drive. They have tighter tolerances than tray-loading drives, and those cleaner discs with the little brush on them are usually only intended for tray-loading drives. There's a decent chance you could end up breaking the drive if you try it. They may make ones specifically for slot-loaders (maybe for video game consoles?), but I haven't personally seen any.

That said, my 1st gen MBP had the optical drive stop working due to what I believed was dirt/dust, and since it was out of warranty and I was going to need to replace it anyway, I figured I'd give a cleaner disc a shot. it sounded awful, which lead me to believe the warnings were accurate, but it actually worked--the drive kicked back in for at least a while.

This was with an older Maxell DVD cleaner, looks like this one:

http://www.maxell-usa.com/index.aspx?id=63;73;556;0&a=info&pid=120

The product page doesn't say anything about laptop drives, but the Amazon product page specifically says not to use it on them, and I'm pretty sure the box does, too. Again, it DID work, so if your computer is out of warranty anyway, there's not much harm in trying a cleaner. I'd try to find one with the lowest-profile brush possible, though.