Discs Can Read, But Won't Play

[TheCyberQuake]

So I'm having a bit of a problem and haven't been able to find a solution. The disc drive is able to read discs. It can see that the disc is a game, and I can open up the disc in file manager to view it's contents. But when I try to load the game, it absolutely refuses to load. Tried burned discs on a couple different DVD-R vendors, and even original game discs. It's a phillips disc drive. It could be the drive going bad, but then I wouldn't think it would be able to read the disc as a game and view the contents of it.
 

I guess for some additional information, current have ind-bios 5003 06, UnleashX for the dashboard. Tried cleaning the lens in the drive with alcohol. I'd like to be able to have it read discs in case I do something stupid and can fix it from the console with a disc rather than have to open it up to take the drive out and work on it form the PC.

I'm hoping there's some way to fix it without just replacing the drive entirely. I have the tools to work inside the drive if needed.

[TheCyberQuake]

Okay NVM, my disc drive just officially gave up a mere 13 minutes after posting this. Now the disc drive just kinda doesn't detect a disc, and just ejects itself whenever it pleases. Weird, guess I'll be picking up replacement drive.