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One possible way to eject troublesome CDs or DVDs
Authored by: ofermod on Aug 08, '06 08:22:08AM

How about:

1- Shut down your Mac
2- Hold down the mouse button while the machine boots



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One possible way to eject troublesome CDs or DVDs
Authored by: kokaviel on Aug 08, '06 08:49:26AM

This seems to be a problem on (all?) MacBooks. Maybe the motor in the CD drive is weak, and cannot spin up heavy discs will a thick sticker label. Maybe the tolerance in the drive is too small and the label rubs while it's trying to spin. In any case, the drive would spin up and mount the disc, but after spinning for a minute or two, the disc would spin down and unmount itself, but could not eject (though you could hear the motor trying).

Simply holding down the mouse button while booting wasn't enough to eject the cd, the motor was still too weak. I tried rebooting multiple times. Eventually, i was able to spit it out, but it took several times.

Anyway, I had this same problem on both my own and my wife's MacBooks. I Placed the same CD in my 15" last-generation PowerBook and it had no problem. Similarly, the CD worked fine in both of my Desktop PC's tray-load drives.



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One possible way to eject troublesome CDs or DVDs
Authored by: azraq27 on Aug 08, '06 10:10:20AM

Yup. Same thing happened the first day I got my 12" Powerbook, and rebooting while holding down the mouse-button did the trick. After that I was a lot more careful what I stuck in there!



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One possible way to eject troublesome CDs or DVDs
Authored by: RussellK on Aug 08, '06 11:08:42AM

Just out of curiosity: does rebooting and holding down the mouse button actually trigger an action different from the Eject button?

As long as you're relying on the hardware's "motor" to eject the CD, why would it be different to a) just press the eject button on your keyboard during normal operation; b) access the Eject CD command via contextual menu/menubar; c) drag the CD to the Trash/Eject icon on your dock; or d) hold down the mouse button during reboot?

In other words, is there any basis for this reboot/mouse method to work (as opposed to just continuously trying to eject via any of the other methods mentioned until the drive finally succeeds in spitting out the disk)?



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One possible way to eject troublesome CDs or DVDs
Authored by: wordsofwisedumb on Aug 08, '06 06:51:37PM

If it is a mechanical problem, no there is no reason to reboot. If there is a problem with software, (like the Mac freezing so the eject button doesn't work) then the reboot solution could help by ejecting before the Mac has a chance to become unstable and freeze.



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