iMac with DVD stuck - will not boot

[GilesM]

Hello,

my brother called me this evening with a problem with his iMac 24' machine.
I have been using iMac for years, but have been unable to fix his issue.

This evening he put a DVD in to his imac. The DVD was accessed by the iMac, then the screen went grey/white with no graphics or symbols on it.

His imac has a wireless keyboard and mouse.

At this point he called me for help.

So, i asked him to ;

1) re-boot whilst holding the alt (option) key.
No joy, back to grey/white screen.

2) re-boot holding the letter C key.
No joy, back to grey/white screen.

3) Reboot while holding ALT CMD P and R.
No joy, back to grey/white screen.

At this point I asked him to switch to a wired iMac keyboard.
We repeated all of the above, no joy, back to grey/white screen.

The disk in the DVD drive can be heard being accessed, I think the iMac is trying to boot from the DVD, but so far I have found no way to make it boot from the internal hard drive.

Any ideas please?

 

[Keysmark]

This worked for me.

SHUT DOWN computer. Notice I said shut down, not re-start. Forced shut down by holding start button may be necessary.

Wait several seconds for everything to stop spinning.

Start computer. Immediately AFTER chime sounds press and hold down Eject button on keyboard. Continue holding down this button until you see the spinning gear. For me this took up to 30 seconds.

Release eject button.

Disk will eject.

Good luck.

Keysmark

 

[GilesM]

Thanks Keysmark....

Eventually we go the disc out and the iMac was all normal again.
As I was on the phone not actually there, I can't say with certainty what took place but I think we shut the machine down, re-booted and just kept punching the eject button.

Turns out the DVD he was trying to watch was well dodgy, it was some kind of compressed movie file apparently holding 5 films.
My theory is that as this was not a 'normal' DVD it may not have had the DVD headers on it, so the iMac would see it as a data disc. So, every time we booted the iMac thought this was a boot disc and was trying to boot from it.

I have told him not to be an idiot trying to run a dodgy DVD in his iMac.
If he must view these awful things, use a DVD player.

Thanks again...