My DVD drive is behaving erratically. It has become picky about accepting a disc, and sometimes having accepted one, it goes through the writing process only to report an error. Then it might do four or five discs trouble-free. It doesn't do any of this consistently. I'm looking at the cheapest option of a lens cleaning kit? Do they work?

It'd be helpful to know, if same thing happens with both, CDs, and DVDs, because your drive has TWO separate lenses for each type of media.

The drive is actually in a Toshiba HDD-DVD Recorder (RDXS-30), not a PC. Sorry, perhaps I should have made that clear. It's about 3 years old and has done a lot of reading and writing in that time.

Oh, Ok.
You can try lens cleaner. They're pretty cheap (under $10). I tried them twice, but never worked for me. My 2 years old Samsung DVD player went south after two years, so...???