“Missing” DVD drive
Posted by Holly.
Yes, I’m still typing away on my 12″ Aluminum Powerbook G4. I haven’t used the dvd drive in a couple weeks, and then put a burned music cd (created on a macbook) in. It spun for a bit, but eventually stopped spinning and never loaded. It’s still in there. Holding the eject button doesn’t work, rebooting and holding down the mouse button doesn’t work. I’ve tried resetting the PRAM, NVRAM, and I’ve done a reset-all in Open Firmware. The drive does not appear in the System Profiler, nor does it exist when using the eject cd command in Open Firmware. However, every time I boot the system or open the lid to bring it out of sleep, I hear the drive spin the cd for a little bit, then give up. I’ve confirmed the disk is indeed spinning by putting a business card in the drive and slowly applying pressure to stop the disk from spinning. This doesn’t eject the CD either, nor does moving the business card to the side to trigger the eject button. I hear what sounds like the eject mechanism activating, but the disk doesn’t come out. WTF? Is there anything I can do short of tearing out the drive and replacing it? All I know is that September 18th, it worked just fine when I burned a back-up of my photos, and it didn’t work when I put the CD in on Oct. 1st.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:05 pm Using
Does sliding a business card to the side make the drive eject? I just tried it on my laptop and it didn’t work.
The reboot with the mouse button down has always worked for me. If that doesn’t work, I’m worried that you have a hardware problem rather than a software one. (The fact that it doesn’t show up in system profiler is pointing the same way.)
I’d be tempted to take it to an apple store and get an appointment with a genius. I can’t find any sign that they charge for it and it’s real live tech support. http://www.apple.com/retail
The other option is just to buy an external drive. http://www.lacie.com has really nice dvd burners for $90. It wouldn’t be portable with you and it wouldn’t fix the problem of having a disk stuck in your computer, but it would be a lot faster and better than the internal drive you have.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:24 pm Using
I’m pretty sure the business card thing is what the tech support guy told me to do before, when they ended up having to gut my laptop right after I got it. There’s something I can feel (and hear) triggering when I do it (without exerting much pressure), but it doesn’t always work. It’s right below the eject key, too.
I looked up the genius bar, and I think the nearest is in Bethesda or something like that. I couldn’t find any indication that they charge, either.
I found somewhere a report of someone having a similar issue, booting off an external HD, which was suddenly able to see the DVD drive again, and then the laptop began recognizing it again. Sadly, my external HD isn’t bootable (but IS nearly full – because I needed to burn to disks!). I suppose I should try to find one before completely writing off the drive.
I’m considering taking the laptop apart to check connections (and bang on things?), but I don’t know that the case will really hold up to many more openings.