How I removed a CD stuck in my MacBook Pro
- January 15th, 2007
- Posted in Mac
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[UPDATE} It appears the best method is the credit card with double-sided tape. read about that approach in the comments. My problem was that the CD (likely the case for DVD disks as well) was physically stuck because of a clear plastic label placed over the playlist side of the CD. I didn't notice it when I inserted it, which increased the thickness of the CD beyond the tolerance of some aspect of the MacBook's eject mechanism. I fiddled around with it for quite a while, trying all the various solutions on the Internets, but none worked.
The slot has a felt dust remover that makes it hard to see what's happening inside. Finally I noticed a metal spring that acts as a kind of door in the middle of the slot. The spring moves up and down when you select eject, which allows the disk to pass.
I suppressed the spring from the top toward the bottom using the very tip of a fine-bladed knife and hit the eject button. A very thin-tipped flat screwdriver would probably work as well, but the business card trick did not hold it down. The drive tried to eject the disk repeatedly and finally I saw the tip of the disk emerge.
Over the last year, many other people have shared additional approaches on this thread, so read further if my method doesn't work for you.
If this happens to you, be patient, keep trying, and you'll get it out without wrecking the drive or spending a lot of money to have someone else remove it.
Thanks for posting this, I was able to remove a stuck DVD with this technique. Perhaps a description of how I did it can help others. I used a small flat screwdriver, but I could never see anything past the dust barrier so I had to feel for it. At the very center of the dust barrier you will see where the four quadrants of the felt material meet, forming a little + shaped hole. You may have to probe the felt to reveal it. That is your target. Carefully insert a small flat screwdriver or fine blade, angling slightly upwards. When you meet resistance, angle the tip of the screwdriver down - you should be able to feel it pushing the spring (or maybe it is the disc itself) down. Hold it in this position and hit the eject button. In my case the disc popped out at the very first try.
If I were Apple I might cut back on smarmy hipster TV spots until they get this particular annoyance ironed out :).
This worked like a Charm! The spring is about center of the drive. I used a very flat metal clay shaping tool and on my very first try the cd popped out. Although I was not fast enough to grab it. I had someone grab the cd while I held the spring down. Thanks for this info!
Amazing. Do you two know each other? The odds of you both posting at almost exactly the same time must be astronomical.
Another HINT !!! I had post here some time ago, but My DVD stuck again, I FIND NEW WAY TO REMOVE DVD. Method above work for me one time, but now i try another one. See steps:
1) Remove your battery
2)Hold down botton to try force eject
3) Place any card to hold and after three times, dvd try eject, but if not dvd pull out
4) When dvd try read 3 times, will try force eject, take off energy power cord at eject and BEFORE DVD is loaded again. You need take off energy at a moment dvd try eject, to set dvd free to drag with any hard paper, card ou battery pack. I did it and remove jusk shake macbook pro up and down.
Can u underestand my hint ?
Good luck
Arthur’s solution worked for me - many thanks.
Thank you very much, your suggestion of the vdery thin bladed knife worked perfectly.
Again many thanks,
David
@ Evan & Kevin: It worked! Thanks so much. I’ve been tilting and positioning my MBP in different directions and at different angles hoping the darn CD would just get ejected. But your suggestion worked on the first try! I just used the tip of my Braun battery-powered toothbrush (without the actual brush attachment).
I stupidly inserted a 2.5″ cd into my macbook pro drive.. I learned too late that that’s a no-no..
So I found this thread and tried taping a super sticky postit note (sticky side out) to a plastic target gift card.. Inserted the card, wiggled it a bit and pulled it out.. w/ the dumb cd on it !! first go.. Thanks to the previous writers.. !!
and to 3M for yet another use for postits.. Everything works fine and no trips to the mac store.. ..
signed.. “Too soon olt.. too late schmart” !!
I had a cd stuck in my MacBook Pro DVD/CD drive. Rather than using I knife, I used a a credit card to hold down the spring while I hit the eject button. Using a credit card or something like that would be less likely to damage your cd or the drive, and you probably wont have to fiddle as much because the card is wider and thinner.
my firmware update stalled and now my macbookpro won’t boot up
i tried a Tiger installation disk, nothing
i found the FirmwareRestorationCD1.4.dmg, burned the CD
but now i can’t eject the Tiger CD because the firmware is ‘dead’ and there’s no manual eject button
I can answer my own question because I just got it to work! I used like a very thin, flat knife, I think it is a putty knife. Once the spring is pushed down, the CD just glided out on top of the knife.
Thanks Much,
We were worried that we had wrecked our new macbook. We got it out with the knife trick on the first try….Thanks!!!!
WOW and THANK YOU!!!!
I thought i’d have to send my computer off to be fixed. However, the thin blade trick worked like a charm! I can’t say thank you enough to the person that was creative and brave enough to try this in the first place.
THANKS!!!!!!!!!!
I have a DVD stuck in the drive and I am getting the White Screen of Death with a flashing question mark… Yosamity-Sam said it best… I think I can fix the question mark problem if I can insert the OS CD but I need to get the other DVD out first, any suggestions??? Tried holding mouse, holding F12, knife, tweezers…
A million thanks to ‘mac’ Sept 22nd who made me feel so much better about my madness putting a 2.5 inch CD in the MacBook (it was Christmas Day), then helped me get it out. (I attached a large Post-it - half to a book of stamps and the other half stuck itself on to the CD inside the drive and it came out first time! Saved me hours of hassle and cost. I am jumping up and down with joy and my family think I’m mental.
I tried the knife technique but no dice, frustrated and confused I wondered what to do, my girlfriend wandered in at this point and calmly asked if I’d tried holding the mac upside down and pressing eject. Nope I hadn’t, but I tried it and hey presto out popped Batman Begins. A very simple solution so well worth trying first. Hope it helps some of you too.
Arthur, your trick worked perfectly! Thank you, a million times, thank you! Mt MB is brand new and I shuddered thinking about being without it for any length of time…also considering the disk was not exactly rated G…
Take a piece of scotch tape (double sided is easier), and apply tape to business card with sticky side out. Stick the business card above the cd and try to move the card down so it attaches to the cd. Try to Eject and pull the card out at the same time. Worked for me on second try, after trying all the other tricks for an hour.
I got a CD stuck in my Mac. It had an adhesive label on top. I tried to use a screwdriver, business card, credit card, laminated insurance card. It just didn’t seem to work.
I used Arthur’s method of pulling the power when the CD is trying to eject. I pulled the plug, shook my Mac, and the CD fell right out. Great tip! Thanks so much. I was freaking out!
Not only is my CD stuck, the Mac does not acknowledge its presence, so pushing the eject button does nothing because it does not think there is a disk there. Any ideas for this twist?
I suggest you depress the little spring as suggested and hold your mac up so gravity can allow the CD to fall out. Seriously. Shake it up and down. This has worked for some people.
before sticking any implements inside your macbook try powering down and restarting. works every time for me. still doesn’t explain why one of the best laptops on the market can’t handle a paper labeled cd or dvd
My cousin had the same problem, I tried the spring pushing and holding it upside, nothing, The macbook didnt recognize that there was a CD in it so hitting eject did nothing. I held it upside down, powered up, pushed the spring and hit eject all at once and on the 3 try, it ejected. It spit out the cd DURING boot up.
So i was on my brother mac and i put a brand new disc in to burn some editing work id done onto i tried to do it like normal but the disc got stuck in while trying to do so now he mac doest even acknowledge that its in there so when i press eject it doesnt do anything and so the disk utility doesnt work either
sometimes when i press eject it does make a noise like its trying to eject it
please please help lol my brother is going to kill me!
whoops
I put double stick tape on a credit card, and inserted it onto the drive placing it on top of the CD. I did a restart and held down the eject button and the mouse button. Just before the sign-in window popped up, I could hear the CD eject mechinism working and I was able to pull out the CD using the double sided taped credit card.
I tried another CD and it got stuck too, so the drive is obviously bad.
I know this sounds maybe a little too obvious, but, hold down the eject button and use a vaccuum with no head on it ( just the tube) to suck it out, worked for me with a regular disc and the 2.5 inch
Lots of good ideas here. Keep them coming.
Arthur from Mar. 15:
If I knew you in person I would buy you a drink! After hours of pulling my hair out, this worked.
After pulling the plug at the right moment I was able to work/shake out the DVD that was stuck.
Thanks!
The internet is right. Shake it harder!!!!!!
nice one. worked a treat!..
I used the backside of an Exacto blade - it worked after 3 tries! - Thank you so much for this great tip!!!
I had already tried tipping it every which way, sticking a card in, and all sorts, with no luck.
Tried first with a card on the spring, but that didn’t work at all. It wasn’t nearly strong enough to hold down the spring-mounted barrier (which is not just a spring as I was expecting from the descriptions). Tried with a knife, but couldn’t get that to work. Tried using the knife to hold the space open wider - scratched up the opening and still no luck. Finally tried a few more times with the knife on the barrier and it worked! I may not have had it quite right the first few times. Thank you for the suggestion.
The disc I had stuck in did not have a label - just a plain DVD-R. Now I’m afraid to put any more in.
Kalen
Arthur, THANK YOU! You’re the man!
In a nutshell people, this is the problem - if your stuck CD is caused by a software issue, you can use the “hold down the button on restart” method to get your disc out. But that doesn’t work if the problem is PHYSICAL, such as a thick or bent label.
Arthur’s hint - which just helped us get out a disc the computer has been trying to eject for 2 hours - is to
(1) remove your battery so the computer has no other power
(2) wait until the computer TRIES to eject it
(3) yank the power cord before the disc can be taken back in because it failed to eject
(4) shake the computer with the disc released but not out yet
It worked for me too Arthur, thank you thank you thank you.
Whoever suggested putting tape on a Target gift card to get out a 2.5″ disc from my macbook is a genius — worked great and my disc drive works fine!
Hi
Had the problem of a disc stick in the drive, got it out after using the credit card trick, but now my mac is doing this EVERY TIME. Is my cd drive broken or is there a way of fixing it?
Thanks!
Thanks a million, saved my day.
I tried the credit card ting. But what helped me was the info about the spring. Thanks again.
I tried a all the methods above and didn’t have any luck.
My girlfriend had a CD with a self adhesive label stuck in her Macbook. The CD wasn’t initializing on the hard disk but sounded like it was always trying to eject. After I slid a business card over the CD I was able to shift it a bit and the CD reengaged and the OS read the disc in the drive. I hit eject and had a pair of needle nosed pliers to grab the disc as it was only ejected 1/16 of an inch from the player. Along with the disc came a piece of paper from the label which I believe was jamming up the drive.
I second the chorus of ‘bravos’: I had a (new) DVD-R stuck in my Macbook Pro. I cut the power during the eject, then used a credit card with tape to fish out the DVD.
I would *never* have figured that out without surfing to this page … !
Go shaking. All of these failed.. I held my mac upside down, shook it while holding down the eject button. Success. Why the fuck I should have to do that for an AU$2600 machine is beyond me, but alas.
Wow I really had my doubts about fixing my little problem myself when i accidentally put in a too small cd in the drive and freaked out when it didnt work. good thing i found this site because I only had my macbook not even 2 days and my husband already thinks im an idiot for spending all this money on a mac and then when he thought i ruined it was like he was right…
SO THANK YOU to everyone who posted the advice of a gift card and a piece of tape sticky side out!!! I owe you my sanity. IT WORKS LIKE A CHARM!
For other alternative solutions also see: http://guides.macrumors.com/Force_Eject_a_Stuck_CD_or_DVD
However, I tested out a method that worked for me. It’s a pretty simple method, so I recommend giving it a shot before deciding to remove batteries, shaking laptop, etc, etc.
1) Launch Activity Monitor - Located in your Utilities folder
2) Find process named ‘launchcd’ under user ‘your username’
2a) The process id (pid) should be 123 (I’m sure it is)
3) Click ‘Quit Process’
4) Press Eject
That should do it.
Another thing you can try is using Terminal to force eject your drive.
1) Open Terminal
2) Type in ‘df’
2a) This should list all drives currently attached to your computer
2b) Take note of the /dev/disk?s? (where ‘?’ is a number)
3) Type ‘hdiutil eject /dev/disk?s?’
3a) If above does not work, use -force flag (’hdiutil eject -force /dev/disk?s?’)
EDIT FOR ABOVE:
If you are doing step 1 (the Activity Monitor) DO NOT QUIT THE PROCESS THAT IS OWNED BY THE USER ROOT!
DO NOT KILL ROOT OWNED PROCESS!
You will kill your computer if you do (meaning, you’ll have to reboot).
thankyou so much!
i really hate it when this happens…anyway…i tried it a couple of times… can u guys give me a little bit more description on what to “feel” for…and thanks alot for the help! :]
Thanks all for the help. I just used the edge of a credit card to push against the spring in the middle of the CD/DVD slot and on the first try of hitting eject the CD popped out.
Same problem as you all: the mac continually tries to eject without success. You can hear the mechanism every 20 secs or so.
Only problem is that I’ve got a large screen IMAC. Can anybody help?
Thanks to the person with the sticky note trick!!! Got it out seconds before I had a nervous break down!!
I am so glad I found this site! My MacBook would not recognise that I had a disk in the drive. Reading through I realised that must mean the disk was stuck to the top of the drive
THe blade trick didn’t work, turning the MacBook on and off while holding eject didnt help… putting some sellotape on the flat card and pulling the disk out? Worked first time.
Turns out a scrap of paper had got caught in the their somehow…I guess that contributed to the problem!
Ok this one for all those stupids who confirm or exceed my stupidity. how to get a mini cd out after it’s been pushed further into the cd-drive. Close your Macbook hold it firmly in both hands and wiggle it it should come out. if not like in my case hit the macbook on a mattress until the shit cd comes out. No scratched no screwdrivers no force eject.
Arthur- you are awesome. I just got a 2.5 inch disk stuck in there- my son’s new video game disk- not knowing it wouldn’t work. I about had an attach when I was the Mac Website wanted 49.00 for a consult about it. I tried the post it attached with tape to a gift card, and out it slid, with the sticky note! You are awesome!
I know this was posted so long ago but i would just like to thank you profusely for helping me get the stuck dvd out of my mac book. I used a dime to hold down the spring and it worked like a charm. THANK YOU!