This Optical Drive is Crazy

My optical drive is going bad...I think. I can no longer burn movies. Brand new blank (high quality) media is not recognized when I try to burn. Every archived photo CD -- will not be read. When I put the Apple Install CD's in -- it can read that. It seems to be able to play a DVD. But everything I read seems to indicate this Matshita drive is crap.
Well, at least I have Apple Care, right? Right. But they want me to mail my laptop in to them. Mail my entire laptop in to God knows where??? Or take it to a store and they will MAIL it off for repair. I cannot be without a computer. I would be out of business. And do I really want all of my personal, business and client information to be floating around -- again -- God knows where.
If I had a Dell, they would come in one day and repair it on-site. I am so angry. I have been a Mac owner for over 20 years, and this type of customer service is why I will probably buy a Dell next time around.
Any thoughts, help, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Specs are:
MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-846:
Firmware Revision: FQ3T
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW, +R DL
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO
Media: No

somewhitechick1 wrote:
Sounds like you work for Apple. Dell absolutely will come to your home, your office...they come to wherever your computer is -- so that you have no down time. That's a pretty darn good selling point, in my opinion.
LOL. Um, we manage over 600 systems, about 45% are Apple the rest run Windows and a good number of them are Dell. We have both Apple and Dell servers. When I call Apple and describe the steps that I've taken to figure out the problem and what my conclusion is, the actually listen, go thru their pages that tell me what steps to try, and suggest any that I have missed, or just plain out put in my order for parts. Straight forward and quick. We have called Dell before with a know problem, but have had to troubleshoot the same steps we already performed in house, time and time again, while they are on the phone. In one case, with a server, we were on the phone for over 6 hours for the span of 2 days before they agreed to send us out a new controller for our RAID. Mind you we have 4 hr (or is it 6?) same day support on these!
My point is.. every tech call does not go as smoothly as we would like. Apple keeps scoring at the top of service call satisfaction as rated by (from what I understand) an independent body. Nobody is saying that they are perfect. I have far fewer problems calling for support with Apple than I do Dell or HP. If your whole point was just to rant about service and not solve a problem.. then this is not the place for such a discussion.

Similar Messages

Optical drive problems after upgrade to Tiger 10.4.10

I've just had my machine updated to Tiger 10.4.10 after having two new hard drives installed after a hard drive failure. I'm now having issues with burning data for backup purposes.
I can't burn anything with Mac OS Disc Burner utility, it doesn't seem to recognize blank disc's DVD's or CD's. It keeps telling me to load a disc when one is already in the drive.
System profiler recognizes CD-R's & DVD-R's when they are in the optical drive
I can burn with Toast Titanium ver 6.0.3 DVD's & CD's. The burned CD's will mount. The burned DVD's will not mount.
I have checked the burned DVD's in the optical drive of my iBook G4 Mac OS 10.3.9 and they mount on it fine.
Movie DVD's will mount & play. Software DVD's will mount and load applications.
I have cleaned the drive with a cleaning disc.
The Optical Drive was working fine before the upgrade, so what is the problem?
I can only assume two problems now!
1.) the optical drive has a physical malfunction
2.) there is a software issue between Tiger 10.4.10 & this optical drive (this is my favorite at the moment)
The upgrade was done by an Apple Authorised Service Provider they say there are no issues with Tiger & the optical drive.
So any ideas or help would be much appreciated.
Machine Name: Power Mac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac7,2
CPU Type: PowerPC 970 (2.2)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 1.8 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1.5 GB
Bus Speed: 900 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.5f0
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-106D:
Model: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-106D
Revision: A606
Serial Number: DBDL909690WL
Detachable Drive: No
Protocol: ATAPI
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-106D:
Firmware Revision: A606
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 2000 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
Media: No

I'm having a similar problem. I bought my G5 with Panther OS on it a few years ago. The DVD drive functioned perfectly back then. Then I upgraded to Tiger this past year which caused the DVD drive to open later..that is, I'd have to hold down the eject button for a good 2 or 3 seconds before it would open or close. Previously it responded instantly. Now what happens more and more is it can't read DVD-ROM disks that it has burned. My imac G4 with Jaguar has no trouble reading the disks but Tiger 10.4.9 and 10.4.10 simply refuse to mount DVD ROM disks that it burned.
I'm trying to make a duplicate DVD of the offending disk on my single-processor G4 and then put THAT disk into the G5 so it can read the info. Hopefully that will be my work-around.
It's got to be a software issue and I keep hoping the Apple wiz kids will put out an update to remedy this. Something's fishy with the DVD drive programming.

Mac Mini not recognizing USB optical drive - when Windows 7 in the drive

This is a really strange situation. I purchased a DVD writer in order to install Windows 7 on my Mac Mini (the SuperDrive stopped functioning some time ago). I've been able to boot from this optical drive to install Snow Leopard, but the Win7 disk isn't recognized when I try to boot from it (just get the folder with the "?"). Holding down "Alt" just shows me the Macintosh HD. I've tried multiple DVDs, including a genuine MSFT printed one with no success. I've attached this same drive to my Lenovo laptop and it booted to Windows 7 setup without a problem.
So, to sum up:
The Samsung DVD writer:
* boots up Snow Leopard on the Mac Mini
* boots up Windows 7 on the Lenovo laptop
* fails to boot Windows 7 on the Mac Mini
The Samsung model is Super WriteMaster Slim External DVD Writer, SE-S084
Any help would of course be greatly appreciated. Chocolate is possible for a really good answer.
- Hop

Hello hoppingboy,
Just an FYI for you.
It is always best to check with the software manufacturer FIRST. They will tell you if they have tested the product and the version, as well as whether or not it will work with Windows 7.
Check out the Windows 7 Compatibility site: (There you will find out about hardware and software compatibility.)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/en-us/default.aspx
There is a pulldown from which you can choose "hardware" and "software".
There are also some great articles, instructional videos and such to help with your Windows 7 at our Springboard site:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/default.aspx
In any event a lot of the times, Vista drivers will work in lieu of Windows 7 drivers, however, it's not 100%!
As stated previously, it's best to have the Windows 7 certified drivers installed.
Thanks again,
John M.
Microsoft Windows Client Support

Optical drive vibrates when burning files

When I burn a dvd or cd in my optical drive (DVD R/W) the whole drive vibrates so hard that I have to clamp it in place with my hand. Sometimes it will not burn the items selected and sometimes it does. I have ourchased a new (used) dvd optical R/W drive and replaced the opiginal one, but it does the same thing. The drive feels as though it is a sloppy fit in the bay, but there are no adjustments I can see to make the fit better.
Is this a common issue with the Pavilion G6, Win 7, or is there some software fix?
Thanks for any help.

Nothing to care its normal when writing CD/DVD notebook will rotate Disk with high speed due to this optical drive vibrates while burning files.
No more action needed

DVD Optical drive is unresponsive

I have Intel iMac 24". It has been nice since I bought it in Feb, '08.
Suddenly DVD drive became unresponsive. In System profile 'Disc Burning' shows 'No disc burning device was found' message.
Other problem is, on startup, iMac tries to mount the optical drive (but it couldn't) and makes the startup slow by 1 minute. Is there anyway to disable optical drive detection in the startup? I am not able to find any nvram command for that.
Any help will be appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Regards,
Rohit
P.S. I took it to Apple store and they told me $250 for replacing the optical drive. (I didn't opt that option, $250 is more) so I will buy an external optical drive. I see lot of people have this optical drive problem. Does anyone know what is wrong in the iMac?
But turning on the machine and on wake up, optical drive does make some sound.

Well, there's a small possibility that the flex cable that connects the drive to the logic board simply went bad. This would be cheaper than the whole drive replacement, but it involves removing the logic board from the system to properly route it, so I definitely wouldn't recommend the average person attempt it.
Instead of an Apple Store, try going to a local AASP and see if you can talk them into just replacing the flex cable to see if that will fix it. And if not, they can replace the optical drive.
It'd be a lot cheaper to replace the flex cable though. That's like a $10 part as opposed to about $150 for the optical drive.

T400: Optical Drive Power Off, Then Disappears

I'm running Win 7 x64 on a T400, and recently installed Power Manager 3.12. Since 3.11, I've enabled the "Automatic Optical Drive Power Off" feature. In Vista, this worked fine, where once the drive was powered off (and the light on it would go off), I'd eject it and it'd automatically power back on. Or, in My Computer, I could right-clik on it and power it back on.
Now, in Win 7, once it powers off, it disappears from My Computer completely. On top of that, the light on the drive stays on, and after a while a different thing shows up in My Computer under "Other" and all it says is "(Powered Off)", but it's not the optical drive. Clicking "Power On" on this phantom device does nothing, and ejecting and closing the optical drive does not get it to show up again either.
The only way I've found to re-enable the optical drive is to remove it physically from the laptop and re-insert it. Then, it'll reappear in My Computer, but the mysterious Powered Off device still remains as well.
Is anyone else having a similar issue? I'm leaning toward the assumption it's one of the many bugs in the Win 7 Power Manager (that along with the Dock Eject Action not functioning properly). I'm at the point where I'm ready to just completely uninstall the Power Manager, as it only seems to cause more problems than it solves.

Sorry to bump this thread, but it seems that this issue is still not resolved. I have just completed an install of windows 7 on my T400, which orginally had windows vista preloaded. Everything is fine, execept for this optical drive issue. Upon auto-power off of the optical drive, the ultrabay slot light does not turn off even though my computer reports the optical drive as powered off. The drive then becomes inoperable until restart, even if you plug in the computer. By inoperable, I mean that windows no longer recognizees it.
Disabling the feature in power manager is not solving the issue however, because that also removes the power saving advantage that this feature has. I have installed both power manager (3.40) and the power managment driver. They were first installed using system update, and I have since removed and reinstalled them manually with no change. I have googled for a solution, but I have only found this thread to describe the problem most accurately. I don't know what I can do to solve this problem.
I have switchable graphics, and the optical drive is a dvd writer,

Fan going crazy after I just got optical drive repaired

Well my fan now sounds like a loud air conditioner or something after getting it fixed at a mac store. Just got it back today because I had to replace my optical drive. I'm assuming it's not dust since it just started, and I do have an appointment set up for it to be looked at but I was hoping to get some comments from you guys.
My computer's fans have never been this loud. And it won't go away either. They start up right when I start the computer up. I could leave it for 5 minutes without doing anything on it and they would still sound like a jet engine or something. Makes me afraid that my comp is going to fry itself or something.
Idk but I think the store must have messed up on something to make it do this. I have heard the fans before but this is crazy.

OFQ wrote:
Well my fan now sounds like a loud air conditioner or something after getting it fixed at a mac store. Just got it back today because I had to replace my optical drive.
hmm ... i wonder if your issue might be related to the experience another user had in this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2434866&tstart=0.
JGG

My MacBook Air does not have an optical drive. I have a program (Megastar V) which is installed using a CD. Is there a way to use the optical drive on my PC laptop to install this program on my MacBook Air?

MacBook Air does not have an optical drive. There is a program I wish to install on my Air which is an astronomy application called Megastar V. Installation requires the use of a CD. Is there a way to use the optical drive on my PC (toshiba laptop using Windows 7) to install this program onto my Air?
With gratitude,
Otto

Thank you for explaining to me how to do this. I will try it tomorrow and let all of you know how it goes.
Otto

No more optical drive and windows 8 issue: "Windows cannot be installed on this disk as it has an MBR partition table."

I have an Early 2011 13" MBP going strong with an SSD and original HDD installed in the optical drive. However, having had success with windows 7 on my old HDD I was planning to install Windows 8.1 (from .iso) on my SSD. However, for the past day or so it's been a nightmare.
I tried the official procedure but by editing the bootcamp info.plist so I could boot from USB (you can't install windows from an external optical drive apparently) partitioning as bootcamp wanted too.
I then tried it a number of different ways using disk utility etc and with an empty space
However, I always seem to end up with the error "“Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only installed on GPT disks“
I read some interesting stuff here http://www.royhochstenbach.com/installing-windows-8-1-on-a-2013-mac-pro/
He points out that
"Windows 7 and 8 in x64 support EFI. Normally if you install Windows on a Mac and use the installation DVD, it boots into regular BIOS mode, thus can be installed on an MBR partition. I tried the same, but since the Mac Pro doesn’t have an optical drive I had to use an external drive. And apparently the Mac boots external optical drives in EFI mode too. The Bootcamp wizard is aware of this, and creates a GPT partition on a non-superdrive Mac but an MBR partition on a superdrive Mac."
This means Bootcamp is essentially making the wrong type of partition?
My real question is? How do I install it windows 8? I'm really on my last legs!
I really don't want to have to open this thing up and reinsert my optical drive as its really really difficult to get out of the enclosure (would probably have to break it).
A huge thanks in advance!

Hi,
Have you tried that suggestion?
You also could use this commands to check and install again:
Inside windows installer, hit Shift+F10 to get a command prompt, then run diskpart and type List disk to displays a list of disks and information about them, such as their size, amount of available free space, whether the disk is a basic or dynamic disk,
and whether the disk uses the master boot record (MBR) or GUID partition table (GPT) partition style.
and then select the target disk. Zap the drive (with the clean command), create GPT table (new gpt), create the GPT-EFI special partitions.
Step-by-step instructions is here for reference:
HOW TO: Use the Diskpart.efi Utility to Create a GUID Partition Table Partition on a Raw Disk in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297800?wa=wsignin1.0
Then reboot so the firmware finds those partitions and adds the disk to the EFI-native boot order (Windows installer checks this).
Karen Hu
TechNet Community Support

I have a standard MacBook from 2007. My optical drive broke on this a while ago. I was wondering which external optical drives are compatible and work with this MacBook? Thanks.

I have a standard MacBook from 2007. The optical drive broke a while ago. I was just wondering what external optical drives, if any, are compatible and work with this model?

You can get a fairly cheap external CD/DVD burner/player at Newegg.com http://www.newegg.com/External-CD-DVD-Blu-Ray-Drives/SubCategory/ID-420?Order=PR ICE

Cannot use 2 optical drives (Apple Super drives) at the same time after downloading OS X 10.8.5. Reported to Apple Care. Anyone else have this problem?

Cannot use 2 optical drives (Apple Super drives) at the same time on my iMac after downloading OS X 10.8.5. Reported to Apple Care. Anyone else have this problem?

Cannot use 2 optical drives (Apple Super drives) at the same time on my iMac after downloading OS X 10.8.5. Reported to Apple Care. Anyone else have this problem?

Is this normal for the Optical Drive?

I don't know if this has already been asked but....
I am kinda worried about the optical drive on my mini.
Has anyone else noticed that the optical drive on the minis is kinda loud, especially right after you have put in a disk? All disks that i put in the drive make a sound like they are hitting against something, but stop after a couple of seconds.
Also, is it normal for a kind of "fluttering" sound to come from the drive when you are playing a DVD (it happens about every 5-10 seconds but doesn't effect the playing at all)?
And finally, are all minis designed so you have to push a disk at least 5/6 of the way before the drive ***** it in?

Yes to all questions.
Optical drives these days make a lot of noise. You don't hear it in something as large as a tower computer because the computer has its entire case to pick up the vibrations. With the drive just under the case cover and nothing to make distribute very far, it will make more noise on a notebook or Mac Mini just because of the constrained space.
That said, if put sticky labels on disks, or get extra thick disks that is not very good for slot loading drives. See this article on nonstandard media:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58641
If you want more flexibility with media, external Firewire and USB optical drives exist. http://www.macsales.com/ has a nice selection that offer full compatibility.

Loud optical drive - is this normal?

On my base 13 inch MBP the optical drive sounds pretty loud and i was wondering if this is normal.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1723
it sounds exactly like that

As long as it has no trouble reading or writing discs, I wouldn't worry about it.
See though my FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/cdrfailure.html
if you start running into issues.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Optical drive accepts discs, tries to read, then ejects - THIS WORKS!!

OMG!
I had this problem! I was just about ready to replace the drive, but then found this link. It uses a credit card and a soft cloth. ALL of my disks work AND I can burn CDs and DVDs again!! The fix is at the bottom of the page.
http://muzso.hu/2008/08/17/how-to-clean-the-lens-of-a-slot-loading-optical-drive -a-macbook-pros-superdrive?page=2

Thank you for the link and the advice.
I followed the path taken by several posters on the link site. They stated that they had used a credit card and a soft cleaning cloth (like the one that shipped with the MBP). I followed this route (although not with a credit card), surmising that this did not require me to dismantle my MBP and the superdrive.
Although I'm not sure what I did, nor where the application of this method was precisely effective, it nonetheless worked and my superdrive has been resurrected.

HT6590 How do I get rid of the '1' indicator on my settings icon on my iPad for iOS 8.1.1? 8.1.1 isn't available on my ipad. this drives me crazy. thank you

How do I get rid of the '1' indicator on my settings icon on my iPad for iOS 8.1.1? 8.1.1 isn't available on my ipad. this drives me crazy. thank you

Which iPad do you have? An iPad 2 or newer can be updated to 8.1.1.
If you check for a software update, what do you see?
~Lyssa

This Optical Drive is Crazy

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for