Causes of CD player skipping?

BEWARE:
CD player gears and the plastic sliders that run atop the rails are made of nylon or Delrin.
DO NOT use regular household oil, 3 in 1, WD40 or any oil with solvents on plastic gears/sliders. WD40 has paraffin in its formula and will leave a sticky deposit.

Most of those lubricants start a chemical reaction with nylon and eventually the nylon part will crack or break. It may take a couple of years but it does happen. If in doubt read the Philips CD player service manuals.

There is a grease made specially for lubricating CD/DVD/VCR nylon parts. It is available through electronics parts stores/distributors.
White lithium grease from Home Depot is OK too, it does not attack plastic parts.
It is also available from Auto Parts stores and on ebay, search for white lithium grease. Avoid the ones mixed with molybdenium, they mess up the parts.
Use sparingly, apply a very thin film with a Q-tip.
Good luck

I found the correct grease.
Search for CDM9 grease on eBay.
Good luck

Wow, nice call Davehrab.

I used to have a decent Sony player that I ditched when it developed a similar problem.

Well, you learn something new everyday....

I'll keep it in my hat for future reference!

Sony CDP-CX300.

I applied with a Q-tip gun oil (that says it has silicone in it) to the single laser guide rail.  That solved my skipping problem.  I observed that the CDs always started skipping between 4.18 and 4:54 minutes.  That was a clear indicator of a "location problem".

I had previously done some disassembly and cleaned the "rack", then re-lubed it with white lithium grease.  This did not work, tho I got a good view of the laser guide rail on the laser assembly that I removed to lube the rack.

To lube the guide rail, I removed the cover, then reached into the access to the guide rail with a Q-tip moderately full of the oil, and wiped the accessible surfaces; the "backside" of the rail opposite the access area could not be reached for lubrication.  The access point is located at the rear left of the player when looking from the front, and in between the black plastic.  Look for the shiny shaft.

There has been many years since previous posts, but those posts were helpful to me.

Skipping
The player executes normal track play, but the music drops out or skips ahead or backwards, or gets otherwise garbled, during play. You might hear some clicks as the CD Pro attempts to track properly. This type of tracking problem is usually referred to as “skipping,” and may indicate that the CD Pro’s laser current is diminished or that its receptor diodes are failing. It will have particular difficulty reading low-reflectivity discs (e.g. CD recordable and rewritable discs) and discs that may not conform to Red Book specification (e.g. pirated discs or non-major label discs).