Old Dell laptop - drive recognising CDs but not DVDs

I have an old Dell laptop bought in 2004, which I continue to use - Dell Inspiron 510m running Windows XP Home SP3. The laptop has an internal CD-RW/DVD combo drive, model Samsung SN-324F, which I very often use for reading both CDs and DVDs. Today the drive won't recognise DVDs, though it continues to recognise CDs. I insert a DVD, the drive spins up (though it doesn't sound like it's achieving the same spin speed that I'm used to hearing), then it makes some noises that are not quite clicks but close enough and then it eventually just stops spinning without recognising that there's a disc inserted. To the best of my recollection, I haven't made any system changes recently. I would love to be able to fix the problem and get the drive to recognise DVDs again. My second (less desirable) option is to replace the drive.

The first thing I tried was to carefully use some compressed air on the drive in case there was maybe some dust or something affecting the lens. (Does the drive use different hardware for reading CDs vs DVDs?) This didn't seem to make any difference. Then I saw a YouTube video that recommended cleaning the lens with a q-tip dipped in isopropyl alcohol. Should I try this?

Then I came across some websites that mentioned that if a drive was recognising CDs but not DVDs, to delete UpperFilters and LowerFilters from the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. I found these values in my registry and deleted them, but it didn't make any difference either. I also uninstalled the drive through Device Manager, rebooted and Windows reinstalled the drive, but still no change re recognising DVDs.

There's a troubleshooting guide here: en.community.dell.com/.../3830.osprey-s-optical-drive-troubleshooting-guide which says: "2.2. If the drive can read DVDs but not CDs, or CDs but not DVDs, replace it." So is the only option to replace the drive?

If I buy a new drive online to replace the current one, is there anything I need to watch out for? For example, are slim internal drives all designed to be interchangeable, or is there some particular interface that I might need?

Thanks for your help.