Dreamcast not working correctly

[sega dude]

I just got a copy of Virtua Tennis from eBay. I put it into my Dreamcast, it starts it and gets to the the game's main menu. But when I select any menu item the Dreamcast goes back to it's main menu. It does this every time. The disc has minor scratches on it, nothing too bad. The laser looked dusty, so I blew it off with compressed air which made it worse, it went back to the dreamcast menu after the Sega screen. So I cleaned the laser with alcohol and now it's back to doing the same thing described above. What can I do?

[Orion Pimpdaddy]

A friend loaned me his nonworking Dreamcast, and I was able to fix it by switching out the controller. Apparently if a controller is damaged a certain way, it messes up the Dreamcast. At least that was the conclusion I reached.

[BlastProcessing402]

I had a Dreamcast that did something similar, but only with original GD-ROMS. CDR's worked perfectly. Wound up just replacing the DC with a new one. Wasn't anything to do with the controller, used the same controllers on the new one, no issues.

[wiggyx]

You may have knocked the laser out of alignment with the canned air. I would avoid using it for such things in the future. At this point, you may just need a new laser assembly. I haven't checked DC console or component prices in a while, so I don't know it it's even worth it to try and replace the drive or just scrap it and grab another working unit.