Maybe the laser can be replaced? I don't know if you frequent Reddit, but r/originalxbox has a lot of knowledgable users who might be able to help you troubleshoot your problem. Some disc drive models were more prone to failure than others, the laser included. But this is why a lot of people have done hard or soft mods at this point to run games off a hard drive instead of using the disc drive. The disc drive door on my 1.2 model only opens about 50% of the time, but I only play a handful of games regularly on it. These disc based systems are ancient at this point (Dreamcast came out in 1999, Xbox came out in 2001), so they aren't exactly in prime shape anymore. But posting your question on Reddit would probably get you good answers.
And I don't want to beat a dead horse, but definitely remove the clock capacitor if your system isn't a 1.6. The clock capacitor on any other model will eventually leak and ruin the Xbox, making it unplayable. It's not hard to do. Check the year of manufacture date on the bottom to know which model you have.
Here is a Reddit link that explains how the date that the Xbox was manufactured determines what model you might have:
https://www.reddit.com/r/originalxbox/wiki/revision