Disc image auto mounts when disc drive is plugged in, causes Finder to hang/crash, prevents shutdown

[TheBetterJoey]

I'm using a Mac Pro (Late 2013) w/ Xeon E5 CPU on Sierra Version 10.12.4. The disc drive is a Sonnet Echo 15 Thunderbolt Dock. The actual drive within the dock is a MATSHITA BD-MLT UJ260AF.

I've burned CD's/DVD's using Finder in the past and had similar issues, but those were easily resolved by disconnecting the disc drive. Now I need to burn BD's, so I'm using Toast Titanium 15 to do that. A BD image is stuck and is causing Finder to lock up entirely when trying to eject the disc, open Toast, or insert another disc. Basically any time I interact with the drive at all, Finder stops working and is causing severe problems. I've spent all day trying to resolve this and have gotten nowhere, so here we go.

I have this stuck on my desktop and in the Finder sidebar:

- If I so much as click on the desktop icon, my cursor starts spinning and never stops. The first time it happened, I walked away from the computer, went to lunch, and came back an hour later to see that it was still unresponsive.

- I have tried dragging the icon to the trash. It becomes translucent and stays in place, never leaving. Cursor usually spins endlessly too.

- Clicking the Eject button on the sidebar makes turns the icon grey but it stays there and the desktop icon stays. Finder becomes unresponsive.

- Dragging the icon off of the sidebar turns the icon grey, leaves it there, makes Finder become unresponsive.

- Unplugging the disc drive does not make either icon go away

- If I turn on the computer with no drive connected, the icons are not there and the computer runs normally. If I plug in the disc drive, both icons come back and the same problems persist if I interact with it in any way. I have tried two other disc drives (neither are docks, just regular USB disc drives) and the issue is the same.

- I have tried force closing and relaunching Finder. The Mac OS UI will disappear, my desktop will stay in place, and Finder will never come back, no matter how long I wait.

- I have tried shutting the computer down via Apple menu. This makes the screen go black but the computer stays on and never shuts off. I tried leaving it this way over night and found it still on with a black screen the next day.

- I tried logging out of my user account. The screen went black and hung there, the same way it did when I tried shutting the computer down.

- Nothing other than holding the power button/unplugging the computer will turn the computer off when this happens

- I tried running Apple hardware diagnostics, and no problems were reported.

- I tried uninstalling Toast and deleting all Toast data. The issue persists.

- Toast will launch and operate normally if I open it after turning on the computer with no drive connected. After the drive is plugged in, the offending icons return and Toast locks up, giving me the spinning wheel of death forever. Launching Toast while the icons are on the desktop/sidebar causes Toast and Finder both to become unresponsive. Force quitting Toast will make the program close, but the program will not reopen after that. My cursor will continue to be a pinwheel during all of this.

- The disc in question was burned using Toast Titanium 15 about two weeks ago. I have burned over 20 discs since then with no issue. I have no idea why this is happening now or why this specific disc keeps coming back.

- If I right click on Toast in the Dock, it shows the name of the disc in the tray. Clicking on that makes Finder and Toast unresponsive.

This is absolutely insane. I can't understand why this disc keeps coming back or how to get rid of it. There is no reason why this machine should have should have so much trouble with a single disc. I can't even come up with an explanation for why it chose this particular disc to haunt me, as it wasn't the first or last disc that I burned using Toast.

What am I missing here? What can I do to make this problem stop, and better yet, how can I prevent it?

Thanks for your time.

 

[TheBetterJoey]

Update: The plot thickens.

I was able to burn a regular CD using Toast with no issues. As soon as a blank BD is inserted, "City Meetings 19" appears and my issues return.

I was able to "Get Info" from "City Meetings 19" and here is what it displays:

Notice how it says it was modified December 2nd, 2016? I didn't even have a BD burner back then, so I don't know where that date came from. The "created" date is obviously wrong too. This computer didn't exist back then and none of the files that were being burned had been created either, as I had dubbed VHS tapes onto DVD's and then ripped the DVD's to the computer, compiled them, and then burned a BD of all of them together two weeks ago.

It appears in Disk Utility too:

Somehow, the computer thinks that I am mounting an ISO (one that isn't actually there) every time I insert a blank BD, and I assume that is the root of the problem. However attempting to unmount the ISO doesn't work, as I've described above.

I downloaded an app called Find Any File and searched for "City Meetings 19" and did find a .disc file in Documents with that name. I deleted that, restarted, and the issue remains.

Isn't there something I can type in the command line to just kill every trace of this ISO?

EDIT: I just tried the Terminal command to unmount Disk1

- diskutil unmount /dev/disk1

the result said it timed out while trying to unmount. So I tried again, this time adding the "force" command.

- diskutil unmountDisk force disk1

It replied by simply saying that it failed.

This is ridiculous.

 

[DearthnVader]

Create a new users account, turn off automatic login, reboot, and login to the new users account. Then plug the drive back in and see if the problem persists.

 

[TheBetterJoey]

Create a new users account, turn off automatic login, reboot, and login to the new users account. Then plug the drive back in and see if the problem persists.

I went ahead and tried this just now. The issue persists in the new user account. Another thing I tried earlier today was booting into Disk Manager, and sure enough, the ISO was mounted there as well and the entire Disk Utility UI locked up when I tried to unmount it.

After doing a whole variety of things today, I've somehow managed to get the computer to be a bit more stable now than it was yesterday. It seems to let me use and burn CD's/DVD's, and sometimes BD's. But a dual layer BD being inside the drive instantly and reliably makes "City Meetings 19" come back. A regular BD will produce the issue, but not every time. I can eject it and re-insert it a few times before the issue comes up. I was able to burn one regular BD today, but after that, "City Meetings 19" returned and I reached my usual impasse.

 

[DearthnVader]

Well, I'm at a loss, I would have thought it was something in your home/library folder, but if it's doing it with a new user account, it must be some preference in the /Library folder.

Only thing I can think of is to try and find whatever that is.

Try

• Open com.apple.sidebarlists.plist (located in Library / Preferences under your user ID)
• Double-clicking the file will bring it up in Property List Editor
• Go to Root / useritems / CustomListItems
• Open all the Item entries
• Each entry should correspond exactly with an entry in the Finder Sidebar under Places
• Find the names of the bogus CD entries in the Name fields of the corresponding plist items
• Delete these Item(s) in the Property List Editor using the Delete Item button in the toolbar
• When done, save the file and exit Property List Editor
• Restart the computer

Likely, you'll need something like plist editor pro, or some other plist editor installed, I don't think Property List Editor works in Sierra.

 

[haralds]

Update: The plot thickens.


EDIT: I just tried the Terminal command to unmount Disk1

- diskutil unmount /dev/disk1

the result said it timed out while trying to unmount. So I tried again, this time adding the "force" command.

- diskutil unmountDisk force disk1

It replied by simply saying that it failed.

This is ridiculous.

Did you try the --force option?

 

[DearthnVader]

I went ahead and tried this just now. The issue persists in the new user account. Another thing I tried earlier today was booting into Disk Manager, and sure enough, the ISO was mounted there as well and the entire Disk Utility UI locked up when I tried to unmount it.

Not sure what you mean by "booting into disk manager", do you mean the Startup manager, or the Recovery HD?

 

[organicCPU]

Type into Terminal:

diskutil list

Isn't /dev/disk1 just the internal drive in virtual appearance? Wouldn't unmount disk1 just unmount your startup drive?
Try to unmount the right mountpoint, e.g. /dev/disk1s2
Maybe try to gather more information with

diskutil info /dev/disk1s2

On your screenshot is written Type:uninitialized
Can it be some kind of collection of files that is just prepared to burn and not an existing ISO image?
What happens, if you right click and choose burn? What happens if you insert a BD named "City Meetings 19"?

What about booting into safe mode (hold shift key)?

 

[DeltaMac]

Do you have an image "City Meetings 19" in your /Volumes folder?
If so, try dragging that volume to the trash.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Have you looked in console crash logs? How about having activity monitor or top running while this happens - any runaway processes?

If not, you might want to try one of those hidden preference apps to tweak your finder. Set it to ignore blank disks upon insertion. Try mounting from terminal again and see what happens.

 

[DearthnVader]

TBJ has found a very odd bug, the best thing to do is submit a bug report to Apple, but you'll need a Developer account. https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/

The few issues I've had, that I reported, got fixed in the next OS Update.

 

[TheBetterJoey]

Did you try the --force option?

I did, yeah. I said as much just below the snipped that you quoted from my earlier post. It didn't work

Not sure what you mean by "booting into disk manager", do you mean the Startup manager, or the Recovery HD?

I held Command+R to boot into recovery, and then opened Disk Utility. My apologies for using the wrong terminology. The fact that this issue persists in that mode and across multiple external disc drives is upsetting.

Type into Terminal:

diskutil list

Isn't /dev/disk1 just the internal drive in virtual appearance? Wouldn't unmount disk1 just unmount your startup drive?
Try to unmount the right mountpoint, e.g. /dev/disk1s2
Maybe try to gather more information with

diskutil info /dev/disk1s2

On your screenshot is written Type:uninitialized
Can it be some kind of collection of files that is just prepared to burn and not an existing ISO image?
What happens, if you right click and choose burn? What happens if you insert a BD named "City Meetings 19"?

What about booting into safe mode (hold shift key)?

On that note, I caught something this morning that I hadn't caught before. If I insert a disc, wait for "City Meetings 19" to appear, then remove the disc manually without interacting with it (so as to prevent Finder from locking up), the "City Meetings 19" listing within Volumes switches to Macintosh HD. If I right click and "Get Info", it points me to the computer's startup drive. If I try to open it, it disappears.

So somehow, the computer thinks that blank BD's are the computer's startup drive, which explains all of the crazy behavior. I can't burn to it, I can't unmount it, I can't eject it, I can't delete it, and trying to force any of these actions kills Finder and prevents the computer from operating normally. Somewhere, the computer is confused about what the blank BD's are.

Is there a bluray driver built into OSX that I can somehow reinstall? If this were Windows I feel like I'd know exactly what to do but I don't know how this stuff works on OSX.

 

[DearthnVader]

Odd, so you booted the Recovery partition, and the City Meetings 19 was mounted?

The Recovery mode has all it's own file system, it a disc image that has nothing to do with the normal OS file system.

Try and issue the command to eject, unmount the disc from the terminal, then run sudo dmesg, or look into the logs from the Console.app, and see if it gives us some more useful info.

Also, you may want to look into the folders in /private/var/ and see if, somehow, there is a ghost image file or symbolic link to the City Meetings file.

 

[TheBetterJoey]

Odd, so you booted the Recovery partition, and the City Meetings 19 was mounted?

The Recovery mode has all it's own file system, it a disc image that has nothing to do with the normal OS file system.

Try and issue the command to eject, unmount the disc from the terminal, then run sudo dmesg, or look into the logs from the Console.app, and see if it gives us some more useful info.

Also, you may want to look into the folders in /private/var/ and see if, somehow, there is a ghost image file or symbolic link to the City Meetings file.

Okay so I've figured out how to reliably get "City Meetings 19" to disappear without killing Finder. I have to use a paperclip to manually eject the disc drive without interacting with the "City Meetings 19" icon in Finder in any way at all. If I do that, then this:

Becomes this:

and once I click the arrow to drop down the new "Macintosh HD", it disappears along with the desktop and sidebar items. This will happen reliably every time, if I follow these exact steps. I'm watching Console when I insert a disc and a whole ton of messages appear and continue to flood the Console for quite some time. Here's a sampling of what's coming up:

It goes on like this endlessly.

And here's what comes up when I manually eject the disc, per the steps I listed above:

At some point, this came up and it caught my eye because it looks like it's referencing 9660 Joilet and showed a bugcheck code:

This rabbit hole just keeps going deeper and deeper... I hope some of this helps get to the root of the problem. I think I understand now that the issue is that the computer is failing to read the disc that I put in, and is somehow going around in a loop and determining that the disc is actually the Macintosh HD. I still have no idea why this would have happened, as nothing out of the ordinary went on between the last BD that I successfully burned and the beginning of this problem.

 

[DearthnVader]

You may want to try and clear you caches:

https://macpaw.com/how-to/clear-cache-on-mac

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Came here to post clearing your finder cache next - sounds like it could be corrupt. Lord Vader beat me to it.

 

[organicCPU]

It seems to let me use and burn CD's/DVD's, and sometimes BD's. But a dual layer BD being inside the drive instantly and reliably makes "City Meetings 19" come back. A regular BD will produce the issue, but not every time.

From the logs:

SAM Multimedia READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x05, ASC = 0x21, ASCQ = 0x00

SENSE_KEY = 0x05 stands for ILLEGAL REQUEST
ASC = 0x21, ASCQ = 0x00 means LOGICAL BLOCK ADDRESS OUT OF RANGE

That sounds like this type of medium is conflicting with some part of the hardware and/or software chain.
Did you upgrade to Toast 15.1? http://www.roxio.com/enu/support/software_updates/toast/v15/
Is the Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.0 installed? https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1714
Do you have the ECHO 15+ driver v. 1.0.8 installed? http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=507&expand=_a3&action=b861#b861
Is your BD media type and size supported?

 

[TheBetterJoey]

You may want to try and clear you caches:

https://macpaw.com/how-to/clear-cache-on-mac

I followed all the steps and manually cleaned everything. The issue persists.

From the logs:

SENSE_KEY = 0x05 stands for ILLEGAL REQUEST
ASC = 0x21, ASCQ = 0x00 means LOGICAL BLOCK ADDRESS OUT OF RANGE

That sounds like this type of medium is conflicting with some part of the hardware and/or software chain.
Did you upgrade to Toast 15.1? http://www.roxio.com/enu/support/software_updates/toast/v15/
Is the Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.0 installed? https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1714
Do you have the ECHO 15+ driver v. 1.0.8 installed? http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=507&expand=_a3&action=b861#b861
Is your BD media type and size supported?

Toast and OSX have been fully updated and the Sonnet software is installed. That EFI firmware you linked to says it's not supported on my system. The BD's are supported by Toast, I burned over 20 discs before this became a problem. Before installing Toast, the BD's wouldn't even show up when I inserted them into the computer. Now, even if Toast is uninstalled or if I'm in recovery mode, any BD in the drive shows up as this 9660 Joliet.

 

[DearthnVader]

I followed all the steps and manually cleaned everything. The issue persists.



Toast and OSX have been fully updated and the Sonnet software is installed. That EFI firmware you linked to says it's not supported on my system. The BD's are supported by Toast, I burned over 20 discs before this became a problem. Before installing Toast, the BD's wouldn't even show up when I inserted them into the computer. Now, even if Toast is uninstalled or if I'm in recovery mode, any BD in the drive shows up as this 9660 Joliet.

That's strange that the disc shows up in recovery mode, almost as if the disc has somehow corrupted the partition layout of your startup disc. I don't think your going to be able to fix this issue, without a fresh install of the OS, and re-partitioning your startup drive.

I'm at a loss as to what this issue is.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I'd be trying to test the device on a different Mac.

 

[TheBetterJoey]

I'd be trying to test the device on a different Mac.

The issue comes up regardless of which external drive I use. I can use the same drive on other Macs with no issue.

That's strange that the disc shows up in recovery mode, almost as if the disc has somehow corrupted the partition layout of your startup disc. I don't think your going to be able to fix this issue, without a fresh install of the OS, and re-partitioning your startup drive.

I'm at a loss as to what this issue is.

I was hoping it wouldn't have to come to that but we're really running out of options aren't we? My main concern is that this issue seemed to come up randomly and persists in recovery mode. I don't want to have to restore this thing only to find the issue still happening on a clean OS. Thanks for all of your support up to this point though. I do appreciate it.

 

[organicCPU]

Before installing Toast, the BD's wouldn't even show up when I inserted them into the computer.

When you made a fresh reinstall of Toast, did you follow the procedure mentioned on the Roxio forum (delete plist files, delete saved state folder) or did you just trash the app? See post #2 at http://forums.support.roxio.com/topic/122536-toast-151-still-not-compatible-with-sierra-10121/ and post #3 http://forums.support.roxio.com/topic/122973-toast-15-crashes-when-click-on-any-of-the-start-topics/ and post #2 at http://forums.support.roxio.com/topic/122113-toast-15-not-responding-on-el-capitan/
Do you have any conflicting third-party plug-ins installed? See post #17 from the last link.
Do you have Toast up and running BEFORE you insert a BD?

That EFI firmware you linked to says it's not supported on my system.

Then it's probably already installed on your system.

I was hoping it wouldn't have to come to that but we're really running out of options aren't we?

There are some more things to try... but it's better to exclude the obvious and more common possibilities before.
E.g., we can try to find out more about the appearing BD image later on.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Would an Etrecheck report be of any use to those here trying to help?

 

[organicCPU]

Would an Etrecheck report be of any use to those here trying to help?

I've already asked the OP to check for known conflicting third-party extensions in my latest post and waiting for response. But who knows, if an EtreCheck could give any additional helpful information!? Might be something that at least doesn't seem to hurt...

 

[DearthnVader]

The only other thing I can think of, is the Blu-ray drive itself has that image in it's cache, but it seems to me that the cache should be wiped when the drive is unplugged.

You may want to contact Sonnet, I've always gotten excellent support from them, maybe they could help try and figure this issue out.