Won't boot and stuck CD

Question

Hi;
Everything was fine this morning. Left computer on and when I came home and tried to wake the computer I got a grey screen with a flashing ? in a folder icon. Tried restarting holding down Option Key, mouse button, eject key, all to no avail. Tried to reboot with start-up CD and discovered there was already a disk in there. This is a family computer used by 4 people so don't know what's in there.
Tried to manually remove the CD by inserting credit card with double sided tape to pull out the CD, using tweezers (too big); nada.
It's a 17" iMac from 2006.
Any other ideas?

Answer 1

> For help ejecting the disk, maybe try restarting your iMac while holding down the mouse button.
> Did you try manually opening the Mac OS X Utilities application by restarting the computer and holding down the Command and R keys?
> If all else fails and you suspect a hardware problem, you can use the Apple Hardware Test:
Disconnect all external devices from your iMac, except the keyboard and mouse. If you have an Ethernet cable connected, disconnect it.
2  Restart your iMac while holding down the D key.
3  When the Apple Hardware Test chooser screen appears, select the language you want to use.
4  Press the Return key or click the right arrow button.
5  When the Apple Hardware Test main screen appears (after about 45 seconds), follow the onscreen instructions.
6  If Apple Hardware Test detects a problem, it displays an error code. Make a note of the error code before pursuing support options. If Apple Hardware Test doesn’t detect a hardware failure, the problem may be software-related. Important:  If the Apple Hardware Test window doesn’t appear after restarting, hold down the Command (x), Option, and D keys and restart the computer to access the Apple Hardware Test software from the Internet. Your computer must be connected to a network that has access to the Internet.
Hope this helps!