Disk Drive won't open: Root Cause

I've seen several posts here and elsewhere on why the DVD/CD drive won't open/eject on the Mac Pro or Macbook. Pressing the keyboard button doesn't eject it, and neither do any terminal commands. After banging my head against a wall I found the cause: VMWare Fusion had "mounted" the DVD-drive so the Mac thought the drive was terminally "busy". If you have Parallels, the same may be happening to you as well.
P.S. I suspect a similar thing may be happening with my external hard drive, which I have set up as my Time Machine drive. I periodically get a message that Time Machine encountered an error but no details. The drive may be hijacked by VMWare when Time Machine tries to access it...

VMware can grab USB devices too. It's a good idea to make sure your VM's aren't set to attach the cd/dvd drive automatically when they start.

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After upgrade to mavericks: time machine keeps asking for my back up disk and won't open unless i plug in the disk. any solutions?

after upgrade to mavericks: time machine keeps asking for my back up disk and won't open unless i plug in the disk. any solutions?
before the upgrade, i could open time machine without the need for having the back up disk plugged in.

Ok. I got it to work, sort of....
As I mentioned before I tried the "disk password" and the "Time capsule Password" options to see if I can start the back up again or start a new backup. Neither worked. So I tried the firmware down grade, but like you said that did not work. I then decided to try the "Account password" option and I have never used this option before becasue it states that if there is data on the drive it would not be acessable after creating an account. Since I wiped out the disk that was nno problem. When I created the new account and choose the drive it asked for the user name and password. I entered the info for the new account I just created(FYI this has nothing to do with your login username and password), bingo! It worked!
Now I have two partitions on the TC disk. The old one and now the new account. I am guessing this is to be used if I have multiple computers, which I don't.
I any case, I am going to wipe out everything again and try again to do a backup the way I had it before.

My dvd drive won't open so I can insert a disc. It has opened in the past by pushing the button on my mac

I can't insert any dvd's because my dvd drive won't open when I push the open key. It has always worked in the past. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

It's possible there is a CD/DVD in the drive that's stuck. Open Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities. Do you see a CD/DVD in the drive? Try ejecting using unmount.
If that fails, restart and hold down the mouse button whe restarting.
Other links:
Kappy's Five ways to eject a stuck CD or DVD from the optical drive https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4795807
Ds store's suggestion: Reboot the computer holding the option key down, wait for the boot drive options to appear, then press the eject key on the keyboard. When it's out, then select your boot drive and click the arrow key to boot up.
http://guides.macrumors.com/Force_Eject_a_Stuck_CD_or_DVD
Hope this helps!

E440 CD/DVD Drive Won't Open

Hello. I bought a Thinkpad Edge E440 and it came yesterday. However the CD/DVD Drive won't open. If it do the paperclip trick, it will, but when I press the button it just makes a few noises and then nothing, if I right click the drive and press eject, same result. Any suggestions please?

reliablepctechs wrote:
obtain a paper clip, straighten it out and insert it in the small hole found on the bezel of the cdrom drive. Doing so mechanically releases the drive...
take reasonable care in doing so....insert it about an inch or so
I saw that you posted the suggested paper clip trick as a solution, but it does not work for me. my machine is a new (2011) hp. i do not think it matters that it is a bluray drive. any other hints would be hugely appreciated

10.4.11 Installed -Safari Crashes, Disk Utility Won't Open

Installed 10.4.11 yesterday via software update on our 2.0GHz Core Duo Macbook Pro.
After installing Safari crashes seconds after opening (it freezes then crashes) and then I downloaded the 10.4.11 update from Apples website (using firefox) but Disk Utility won't open it. If I try and launch disk utility myself it just bounces in the dock once and closes. Please help!

Same here - two identical iBook G4's, both updated to 10.4.11 - one is fine and everything works, the other one has the following problems: safari crashes 100% of the time, USB devices are failing to be recognised (mouse, storage key etc).
Looking in /var/log/system there is an error message saying a previous version of a kernel module is already loaded (cant get to the original error message text sorry!).
Looking on other forums looked like a simple 'trash the cache' fix - which I did - and hey presto the usb devices started working - but not safari. Messing around trying to flush out a safari cache failed after a few attempt, as did fixing file perms, zapping PRAM, booting from open firmware, and all the other usual things mentioned in the forums.
As it happens the iBook has nothing precious on it - so though to reinstall from the original installation disk. iBook G4 specific OSX Tiger distribution disk 1 inserted, but iBook now refuses to boot from it - holding down the c key on reboot just pops up a blue screen with a folder icon on it and an alternating finder and question mark logo - as in 'error I can't find a system on this installation disk' - the iBook then boots from the internal disk - getting nowhere fast.
Out come the Leopard install disks, and iBook quite happily boots from there and is right now doing a clean install from them (like I said nothing precious on there and thats why I cant get to the original error message...).
I've seen lots of posts about folks struggling to boot from the original install disks recently - wondering if patch 11 did something to knock the OSX version number on the machine greater than the version on the shipped G4 install disks??
And there is something very odd about patch 11 that seems to have hit this iBook and not my other one - they both installed fine, they have identical software apps on them and they are both the same spec.
Can't help more than this - but given I've seen these issues raised in several places worth adding to the thread.

Disc drive won't open after update...

Just noticed my disc drive won't open using the eject key...I can open tray with toast and disc will mount and eject it.. but eject key won't work...have repaired permissions after the updates... one was for bluetooth which I don't have installed..other was security...
Any suggestions or help would be appreciated..

What system do you have? From what I read it looks as if you haven't yet installed 10.4.3.
Try (re-)installing 10.4.3 using the combined upgrade.
Oops... I just saw you indcated you are running 10.3.7. Any reason you did not upgrade to 10.3.9? My advice to reinstall the combined update to the latest system still holds
Before that, just to be safe (one never knows) don't forget to backup!
Message was edited by: Frank STENGEL

My DVD drive won't open when I click the button

Hi there
I'm hoping someone can help me.
My DVD drive won't open when I click the button.
I've tried clicking on eject on the DVD Drive icon in My Computers and it comes up with an error message.
I think I deleted cookies the other day. Could that have anything to do with the problem?
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I really don't want to send my laptop away to a technician.

Hi
Try to open the CD/DVD drive manually.
Near the eject button you will find a small hole.
You could use a small object like staple and could push it carefully into this hole.
Usually this should helps to open the drive manually.

G3 iBook white: CD drive won't open, emits beep

When I push F12 on my g3 white iBook the computer beeps and the drive won't open on its own.
I have to use an opened paper clip to pop the tray open.
Likewise the tray won't open when I click apple/E on a Cd's icon.
Is there a firmware fix for this?
The computer is three years old. Logic board has been replaced twice under the logic board program.

Hi, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
Have you tried dragging the CD's icon to the trash? Does that give the same result?
When there are operating anomalies, one of the first troubleshooting steps is to reset the PMU. You may want to try that, but I fear it may be a hardware problem with your optical drive.

TX2 DVD Drive Won't Open

I bought the Tx2 2 days ago. I had the keyboard stop working on me and was able to get that fixed. Now the dvd drive won't open. When I first boot up the LED light flashes, letting me know that there is power to it but whenever I push the open button, nothing happens. I have tried ejecting it from the drive icon inside of windows explorer and media player.
I bought this so I could watch movies during my 2 1/2 hour commute so if I can't get this drive open I will be returning it.

Is there a small paperclip-sized hole on the front of, or next to, the drive? If so, you can put a paperclip in there to manually eject the disc drive.
Is the drive showing up in the "Computer" explorer window?
Also, try going to Device Manager and see if the drive is listed or in an error state.
"A riot is the language of the unheard." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Disk Utility won't open?

So, I bought a new Kingston 8 GB USB Drive, and I plugged it in and it worked fine. Just now, I tried to use it again, but this time it never mounted. It works fine on a Windows PC. So then, I tried to open Disk Utility to see if it was getting read at all, but it won't open... Disk Utility for some reason has the standard Blank sheet of paper, pencil, ruler icon.
So, I guess my REAL question is how do I get this flash drive to work on my computer, but I need to figure what is wrong with my Disk Utility as well...
Thanks.

jtericsson445 wrote:
I bought a new Kingston 8 GB USB Drive, and I plugged it in and it worked fine. Just now, I tried to use it again, but this time it never mounted. It works fine on a Windows PC.
Is/was the drive formatted FAT32 by any chance? Did you properly eject it from your Mac before unplugging it?
then, I tried to open Disk Utility to see if it was getting read at all, but it won't open... Disk Utility for some reason has the standard Blank sheet of paper, pencil, ruler icon.
This is a completely different and more severe problem. Are you saying that disk utility does not work? If so, it's probably unrelated to the other problem.
Boot into the Leopard DVD and after the language screen, on the Utilities menu select the disk utility and repair HD and permissions.
Also run a safe boot - boot holding down shift key and at login screen select restart and let reboot normally.

Lower DVD drive won't open/close since Snow Leopard upgrade

Hello,
I have 2 optical drives in my Mac Pro: 1 Superdrive in the upper slot and 1 DVD-ROM drive in the lower slot (a HITACHI DVD-ROM GD-7000 which came with my old Dual G4 450).
Since upgrading to Snow Leopard, I can't use the lower drive anymore, it won't open or close (I used the alt-eject keys, nothing happens). The drive also is not listed in the eject-menu in the menue bar, but it appears in system profiler as:
HITACHI DVD-ROM GD-7000:
Modell: HITACHI DVD-ROM GD-7000
Version: 016J
Seriennummer:
Absteckbares Laufwerk: Nein
Protokoll: ATAPI
Einheiten-Nummer: 1
Socket-Typ: Intern
Low-Power-Polling: Nein
Ausschalten: Nein
Anybody any ideas what I can do to get that 2nd drive to work again?
Thanks in advance,
Peter

Today I had a little time do do some testing:
The tip with the SMC RESET button didn't help.
Zapping the PRAM/NVRAM didn't help either.
The jumpers were on "cable select" on both drives, I tried to set one as "master" and the other one as "slave". Problem still exists.
I changed the position of the drives to check if the cable is ok. Still the same.
I unplugged the other (working) drive and had just the one plugged in. It shows up in system profiler but not in the drives menue nor in the disk utility application.
I booted from my 10.5 installation DVD and tried the disk utility from there. It's not on the list.
Any other ideas?
Peter

Disk Images won't open after update to 10.4.10

After updating to 10.4.10 disk images (dmg-files) won't open any more. I get the error message "The following disk images failed to mount:.. Reason: Device not configured". This happens every time on every disk image. These same images mounted just fine before the update.
Any ideas?

what if the disk image is on an attached FireWire Drive?
there is no OS on that drive, so I can't repair permissions.
I have two disk images on it: one opens fine, the other I get "no mountable file systems"
It opened just fine a few weeks ago
??

Lacie External Drive Won't Open iTunes Or iPhoto Libraries?

I have copied my iPhoto and iTunes libraries onto my external Lacie hard drive and they won't open. All other copied files are fine including iMovies. iPhoto and iTunes have worked in the past. I am at a loss as to what has gone wrong.Any help would be much appreciated.

David
So your sure the app is pointed to the correct Library? Did you go through the step above?
Have a look in Home/Pictures... is there a iPhoto Library Folder in there? If there is, look in that folder and see if there's a file called library.iPhoto?
(For iTunes, do the same in Home/Music...
Assuming that the app is pointing to the correct Library on the External HD:
Try rebuilding the Library: hold down the apple and option keys, then launch iPhoto. Use the dialogue box to rebuild the Library. Choose all four options.
If that doesn't work, you may have a corrupted Library. Is the External formatted for Mac. Many disks come formatted for WIndows by default. Check this at Disk Utility. Select the disk in the Left Hand Pane and on the right hand side you'll see the format of the disk on the drop down menu.
Regards
TD

Disk read error, and Disk Utility won't open

Have a PowerMac G4 dual 800mhz, with two hard drives. Mac OS X 10.3.9 is installed on HD1. I use HD2 for miscellaneous files.
Using the Azureus bittorrent client, I'm getting "Error: Disk read error - Input/output error, read fails" in the Status column when trying to download something to HD2.
However, I'm able to upload files from HD2 for other users, and I'm also able to play video files that are stored on HD2 without problem.
The real issue is that when I went to see if I could fix anything by opening Disk Utility, it won't open. It goes into an immediate state of Not Responding. It won't listen to me when I tell it to Force Quit... I have to wait a long time, or restart the computer, to get it to stop showing up in the dock.
Any advice would be appreciated.

To repair a startup volume you must do the following:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. Then select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now shutdown the computer for a couple of minutes and then restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger) and/or TechTool Pro (4.5.2 for Tiger) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
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The disk drive won't spit the cd out of the drive? What do i do?

I was watching a movie and ejected the movie and it wouldn't come out. It sounds like tries then it dies. It does this for about four to five times; and it does this everytime i open or turn on my computer. What can i do, if there is anything i can do without buying aa new disk drive.

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Have you closed the app you were using to watch the DVD?
If so, hold down the trackpad (or hold its left button) while your MacBook is starting. This will force the SuperDrive to eject the DVD.
If it doesn't work, hold Command and S keys while your Mac is starting to start up in single-user mode, and type:
drutil eject && exit
There are other methods, but they won't work if these ones didn't do the trick. In this case, take the computer to an Apple Store or reseller to get your disc drive replaced, or get an external DVD drive

Disk Drive won't open: Root Cause

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