Entertainment Center: TVs, Stereos, VCRs and DVDs - NAD CD player squeaks, can't load CD

I have an NAD 5170 cd player that I bought new how ever many years ago, around 20? It's been well cared for but a few years ago started having intermittent problems loading a CD. The timer/counter starts up on the display and it attempts to load but fails. You can hear a faint squeaking sound and then after about 10 or 15 seconds it stops trying to load and goes back to stopped mode. This happens whether loading from the drawer or the disc cartridge.

I took it to be repaired a few years ago but naturally it worked perfectly in the shop and they said they couldn't find anything wrong with it. Eventually the problem became constant and it never would successfully load a cd. I recently moved and had everything in storage for a year and a half. With the intention of shipping the player to an authorized NAD repair center, I never took it out of the box once I got moved into the new house. A few months later I finally got around to sending it off so it hadn't been turned on for at least two years. The repair people just called today and guess what? They said they couldn't find anything wrong with it. Apparently the move and/or shipping it off to be repaired jostled it around enough to get it working again (temporarily I'm sure).

It's still at the repair center, I discussed the problem with them a little more and told them to keep it and try to get it to fail. Based on the symptom surely there couldn't be more than a couple of things that could be causing this. Is anybody here familiar with this problem and could tell me the cause so I could explain it to the repair center? I'd even be willing to try and fix it myself if I had some guidance.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I really like the multi-disc changer on this player and would like to try to salvage it. It's frustrating enough that a player that I couldn't get to work at all suddenly starts working perfectly once it's in the repair shop but even more frustrating that, after hearing what the problem is, the repair tech can't make an educated guess as to the cause even if it has temporarily recovered...

What condition are the CD's you're trying to play? If they're also 20 years old, they could be dirty, scratched or otherwise damaged. Contrary ot the marketing hype, optical media is not indestructable. The tech shops will use a known working CD for testing.

CD players have become more forgiving of bad discs over the last 20 years. They have better error correction and better optics. A disc that plays fine in your car may not be within tolerance of the older player. Have you tried a brand new commercial (not home-burned) CD?

Short of cleaning the lens -- with a swab, not a cleaning disc -- and perhaps re-aligning the laser, I wouldn't know what else to try.

What condition are the CD's you're trying to play? If they're also 20 years old, they could be dirty, scratched or otherwise damaged.
The CDs are pristine, I'm a fanatic about my vinyl, CDs and DVDs. I don't loan them out or even allow anybody else to handle them. The CDs range in age from 20 years to the present, the majority being more recently purchased. It's not a CD problem, it's the unit.

RE Damaged CDs: I just threw it out there. I should have known you'd be meticulous. They never sold NAD at Wal-Mart. ;)

I hope the service center finds something wrong ...

RE Damaged CDs: I just threw it out there. I should have known you'd be meticulous. They never sold NAD at Wal-Mart. ;)

I hope the service center finds something wrong ...
Thanks, I appreciate it. It's frustrating to have such a nice player with a feature I really like (the multi-disc cartridge changer) that I can't seem to get repaired.