Theres a place in Stockton called Chips or something? They take a layer off the disk, repairing most scratches etc. Don't know if you can get down to Stockton easily, but atleast you know it's do-able.

Operator error.....

Can you actually see damage on the disc ?? They have to be heavily scratched not to play anymore. Your sure your dvd drive is working ? You tried other dvd's ?

this is'nt the a to z of british hit singles that you were compiling is it? the one i was hoping to beg a copy of?

There's a 'Chips' on Park Road (a stones throw from you Mutley) and in the town centre Grainger Games and Gamestation do disc repairs I believe.

If it's a recordable DVD, which it sounds like it must be, the registry may have been damaged / deleted accidentally. I'm afraid if this is the case see Groovy's first post on this thread above.
There are some programmes that retrieve data but I don't know of any that are free - I've used 'Power Data Recovery' when I've lost data from a usb memory stick & from my PC when it crashed. There are companies out there that will retrieve data but there's no guarantee that everything will be found and they are very expensive.
With luck it will just be a scratch that can be polished / skimmed. Good luck.