[Roofjac]

Someone sent us a CD with their invitation to their wedding. I put it in the computer and now it makes a noise, but nothing is happening. I am trying to eject the CD, but it will not eject, or stop with the noise like it is trying read and open the CD. In finder the eject will not highlight. Any help. We have 2.66GHz, Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB 1067MHz, Mac OS X

 

[monokitty]

Restart and hold down the mouse button the second your hear the startup chime. (Press and hold - don't let go until it ejects the disc, if it does - give it a minute.) Then, if the disc comes out, never reinsert it again. (The disc is bad or your optical drive is bad - likely the disc.)

 

[Roofjac]

Ok will try that right now.

 

[Roofjac]

Thanks

Lars, that worked. Thanks so much for the quick reply and tip. I have already put the disc in the garbage, and will not do that again. Also put a disc with pictures and video of our grandson in and it works, so not the optical drive. Thank you again. I really love this forum.

 

[CubaMark]

By any chance did the disc have a paste-on cutesy paper label?

 

[Roofjac]

Yes, it did. Picture of the loving couple holding hands, showing off the "rock".

 

[CubaMark]

Yup. Those lovely things are the bane of (particularly) slot-loading optical drives. Either the label will put the disc out of balance, making it unreadable (at best) or self-destruct (worst), or the label comes off and clogs up the drive.

Damn things should be banned....

CD/DVD Labeling Tips: Avoid Those Stick-on Labels!

How I removed a CD stuck in my MacBook Pro

CD stuck in imac, eject sounds have gone silent too

 

[AndyB]

I have a similar problem and whether I hit eject in finder or hold the mouse button down at start up the best that happens is the disc just barely shows it's self between the dust covers and goes back in.

This Macbook Pro is barely a year old.

 

[CubaMark]

AndyB, same question: Does the disc in question have a label on it?

 

[AndyB]

Maybe, it was new and a short run put out by a car club but to be honest I took it out of the case and stuck it in the Mac and did not notice.
So if it has a label that's come adrift what's the next step please?

 

[CubaMark]

Getting something out of a slot-loading drive is a bit of a nightmare.

You could *try* to help the disk out by inserting a piece of paper - same width as the CD slot - and then ejecting, hopefully catching the label (if that's the problem) before it gets hung up on something.

Worst case scenario is that if there is a label, and if it's come off, it's possibly stuck in there real good. Not sure if even a teardown (taking the drive out) will give you enough access to get at it...

For teardowns, check the excellent guides at iFixit:

And it should go without saying - if anyone ever comes across those tiny CDs, the ones that are about 2-inches 'round? NEVER put them in a slot-load drive.

 

[jamesB]

I had this same problem some time ago, where the disc started to eject and only showed up for a moment before being sucked back in.
What I did was took a pair of tweezers and waited like a cat watching a mouse-hole, as soon as the disc showed itself I snagged it with the tweezers and pulled.
It worked for me...

 

[pm-r]

Get out your handyman pliers, and when it ejects just a fraction, quickly grab the disk with the pliers and pull it out.