Ejecting A Stubborn CD

Tuesday, Mar. 15 2005 | Author: jeremy

Macs used to have this great device for ejecting CDs that were stuck in the drive. It was a tiny hole that you stuck a paper clip in and it would manually eject the CD.

Apparently that was just too simple a solution. There are still a few tricks you can use to get that stubborn CD to eject.

Boot your computer while holding the mouse button.

Restart into Open Firmware by holding command-option-O-F and enter eject-cd.

Open the Terminal and enter drutil tray eject.

If #3 doesn’t work, you probably have more than one removable device connected. Enter drutil list to see a list of the connected removable devices. Find your CD in the list. Assuming that your CD is #5, enter drutil tray eject 5.

If the above options fail, you’ll have to take an unfolded paper clip to that little round hole on your CD drive. Insert the paper clip, and press gently until the CD ejects. If you can’t find your drive’s eject hole, you may want to look through Apple’s Knowledge Base.

Via MacMerc

Category: Uncategorized

5 Responses for "Ejecting A Stubborn CD"

John

March 15th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
1

Hate to say it but…

The only solution for that one is to replace the CD-Rom Drive. Atempting to repair the tray gears is time intensive and likely to break the CD-Rom further.
John

March 15th, 2005 at 3:24 pm
2

The trick is one day it will not open, keep that in mind.
The Wolf

March 17th, 2005 at 1:17 am
3

I have killed a CD drive using a paper clip like that…
espd

March 18th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
4

Here’s another easy fix to try first, before shutting down and so forth. Just fire up iTunes and hit the Eject CD button on the interface. This will often eject a stubborn CD or DVD. It has always worked for me, even when the Finder does not see the disc.
Shawn

September 11th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
5

I had a DVD that would not eject, and none of the above tips would work

Whad did work was booting the Mac into “Target Mode” (by holding the “T” key at bootup until the firewire symbol appears on the screen)

Once I was in target mode the DVD ejected successfully.