ESR or PS2 at fault?

I've been using FMCB/ESR for about a week or two now, but recently the PS2 is taking a l ong time to load games.

The FMCB splash comes on screen, then the drive goes to the config/browser window, and I have to manually select esr to boot the title. However, even after doing this it takes roughly 5-7 minutes (I kept a rough time) of black screen being shown before I hear the ps2 drive spinup.

Now I did try and run a retail title, and that booted up straight away (I removed the memory card with FMCB on it).

So what's the problem down to?

Cheers

could it be you are using low quality dvds?
or burning the backups at high speeds?

I'm using Taiyo Yuden 03 dye DVDs, and burning at 4x. The games loaded quickly last week, but this week they're taking forever. It seems odd though that retail discs load normally and quickly but burnt discs take ages to load. Could FMCB/ESR be corrupted, as stated I have to load the burnt title by manually going to esr as it doesn't do it automatically.

It's definitely media/burner/laser problem. It simply is a little bit harder to recognize dvdvideo disc for ps2. So your ps2 tries to recognize the disc and it takes forever (ESR simply waits untill it's done, it doesn't interfere at all). You most likely used crap media or burner. Also, usually burning at 4x doesn't give you the best quality possible (depending on the media and burner, of course, but usually for 16x media the best quality is achieved at 12x or 8x).

Are you sure it's Taiyo Yuden and not some crap media with TY code? Are you sure your burner is ok? Burners usually last for 10-15 months before they start to quickly degrade (I usually replace burners after one year of use).

It is also possible, that your laser has degraded due to the poor media quality.

What's the PS2 version?

Yes they're good quality TY discs, I used them for the Wii too. THe burner is a Plextor 800A, and it's fine (I burn wii games without problem).

I'm going to put it down to a weakened laser, as that's the only thing left that could be causing the problem. It is a used PS2 so may be I bought one towards the end of its life.

The PS2 is a 75xxx