So, got some nice new DVDs as an early Christmas present this year. Put them into my laptop yesterday which is running Fedora Core 5. I've never had a problem playing DVDs in Xine with it, and this time is no different.

I watch a couple hours of House MD and when I switch to Disc 3, Xine gives me an error message about missing MRL. The first thing I do is try other discs to see if it's a bad DVD ... When I take the Disc out it is HOT, seriously hot, and the other discs that have played without problems in the past either give me the same error message or begin to play jumpy. CDs also are not playing correctly.

Thing is I'm not sure whether this is a software or a hardware problem. When I went to switch to Disc 3 I noticed that totem (which is the default player for DVDs and practically useless to me) was hanging up my system a bit, and that the whole computer was lagging a bit. So I tried uninstalling that first, then just turning off the computer and letting it cool down. This things helped a little but did not solve the problem.

Basically I was wondering if there was any program I could use to test the DVD drive to rule out a hardware problem before I drive myself completely nuts trying to figure out potential software issues?

Check the air intake/exhaust ports for obstruction (dust, lint, etc.) and air flow. If air flow is obstructed, it will get hot inside the case. If the cooling fan(s) stop working, it will get hot inside the case.