Stage 2 won't load (PCE DUO-R) - what could be the problem?

A friend of mine has a problem with his PCE Duo-R. He's got no CD-games except for Hellfire S. It runs fine, but when the stage 2-intro (the anime pictures) is supposed to load, nothing happens.

You can hear the laser moving around. The screen just stays black after the 1st stage, and it's always at that point. Audio-CD's work fine though.

Any ideas what he could try to get it working?

 

Maybe scratched or dirty? He could try cleaning it or using scratch fixer. If it's too bad, he could try dumping it on a PC and making a CDR. I've done that with a number of SEGA CD games I have that are badly scratched.

 

is he using a cdr backup cos they do that sometimes..

 

The CD is original and looks perfectly fine. It plays on my Duo-R without any problems.

It seems like it works now. He didn't do anything about it though.

 

Might have just been some dust on the lens, then. Or maybe he's just crazy!