Help on repairing a Sony portable CD player

Most general-consumer CD players, particularly portable types, cost less as a working unit than the parts and labor required to effect physical repair. Even In-Warranty service generally consists of swapping out the unit. You might try cleaning the laser lens with lint-free swabs and lens-cleaning fluid, and maybe carefully lubricating the tracks the laser tray assembly rides on, but beyond that, there's not much thats practical you can do. If the laser tray assembly was off its tracks, it very well could have been to to shock from a blow, such as having been dropped, which miss-aligned the laser or damaged some other component. A possibility would be to scavenge appropriate functioning parts from a similar unit which has failed for some other reason, but likely that's not too practical an option unless you've got a workbench full of stuff to start with.

Nah, I wasn't going to get it professionally fixed; that would be just pointless in all scenarios. I'll just uh, buy a new one then.