24" Alu iMac slowing down, tried Onyx, got this message...any ideas?

[palmerc2]

Hello all, I have a 24" iMac with a 2.8GHz C2D and 4GB of ram running Snow Leopard. Lately it has been slowing down in all aspects, from Safari, to spotlight, to spaces, everything is just painfully bogged down.

I tried running onyx, but while doing that I got this message popup while doing the initial scan:

I would do this, but the problem is my disk drive has a CD stuck in there and will not come out (I'm pretty sure I broke it trying to get it out too). So is there anyway around this? Can't I just go straight to disk utilities and choose repair my startup disk that way?

After I clicked "OK" it brought me to the main program, which I don't know how to use yet - so will refer to tutorials and such...unless I can get some tips here

Since I am not that Mac technical savvy, I don't want to screw anything up without getting the A-ok from some genuine help.

Thanks!

 

[emptyCup]

the problem is my disk drive has a CD stuck in there and will not come out (I'm pretty sure I broke it trying to get it out too). So is there anyway around this? Can't I just go straight to disk utilities and choose repair my startup disk that way?

No, you can't repair the drive that the repair program is running on. I assume you've tried holding the Eject key down or dragging the image of the stuck disk to the trash. Have you tried restarting while holding the mouse button down?

You could repair your drive by starting from an external drive. But if you actually have a broken disk physically stuck in your machine it needs to be removed. Call Apple and arrange to have this done. Using a drive that has structural errors on it will only make things worse. Best wishes.

 

[rkaufmann87]

Wouldn't it just make sense to bring your machine in for a service to get the SuperDrive repaired. Once that is done then you can address your HD issue.