How to Eject a CD when it’s stuck in a Mac

So a client brought in their computer to my repair shop and it was a Mac. Now we don’t get many of these in for repair so I screamed in surprise and after the customer left (I had to convince him that the scream was a nasty oversight on my part and would NOT happen again) I set to work using my diagnostic CDs. Then I ran into a problem.

Problem:The freakin’ disc won’t eject from a Mac!?

Fix:There are many different way to eject discs from a Mac including terminal commands. One of the following should work. I’m gonna start obvious and work my way into ridiculous.

THE FIRST METHOD:

If you have access to the Mac desktop then things should be easy. Simply click and drag the icon of your CD into the trash. Hopefully the thing pops out and your free to enjoy your life!

THE SECOND METHOD:

Turn off your mac, click on the mouse button (hold it, don’t let go!) and turn the Mac back on. The Mac tells itself ”Oh! The user is holding down the mouse button! Why that’s the command to tell me to eject any CDs I might have! I should do that!” And the disk should eject.

THE THIRD METHOD:

Turn off the computer. Turn it on and immediately press down on the following buttons: Command-Option-O-F. The command button has an apple or a weird squiggly thing on it, the option button says option, and then the two letters “O” and “F”. Keep these pressed until something called Open Firmware loads onto the screen. It will say “welcome”, type: “Eject CD” This should eject the disc.

If it works type “mac-boot” and your Mac will load your desktop normally.

THE FORTH METHOD (NOT FOR NOOBS):

(This has the potential to damage your CD Drive, so use it with caution.)

Sometimes the CD can be stuck on an “infinite loop.” This simply means that the disc is too busy spinning ’round and ’round to pay attention to your pleas telling it to come out. This is the method that finally allowed me to get my disc out of the Mac. What you need to do is find a business card (paper not plastic!), something cheap nothing special. Fold the business card in half and carefully and slowly push it into one of the ends of the drive. Keep in mind that your doing this while the computer is on.

You should feel the disc slowing down as the friction against the card reduces its speed. Once it is completely motionless one of two things will happen:

1) It will come out by itself. Congratulations your done!

2)You have to tell it to come out. This means that you have to use method #4 in combination with one of the other attempts above. And the disc will finally come out.

How to explain this problem to the client: Well valued shopper sometimes computers mess up and there really isn’t anything we can do about it. It looks that in this case the Mac simply “forgot” about the disc and you need to use special methods to coax the disc out. Good thing you have me as your tech, eh?

Good luck and tell me how it goes on the forums.