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rockdawg

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 15, 2009
3
0
My Intel based imac (purchased in Sept 07) won't boot up because there's an unreadable movie dvd in the disc drive that won't eject... when I turn on the computer, all that happens is it plays the opening chime and displays a white screen... I'm wondering if someone can help or suggest what's going on:

Basically I put a movie dvd in my imac that my regualar dvd player wouldn't play so I thought I'd try it in my imac. Once inserted, the disc drive tried to read it but it wouldn't mount, it just made an odd spinning/grinding sound. It wouldn't eject using the keyboard eject button so I shut down my computer so that I could call a friend to ask for advice.

My friend gave me several options to try - holding the left mouse button at start up, hold C down on keyboard, command option O F to open firmware, reboot pram but non of them work. Basically when I start my imac it immediately tries to read the unreadable dvd and doesn't get to the normal start up procedure, it just shows a white screen and chokes on the dvd.

Is there a way to manually eject the cd or does the machine have to be opened up and the cd physically removed?

Is it likely that my imac will start up normally once the unreadable dvd is removed?

I hope my hard drive hasn't gone bad because I haven't backed it up in a long time... Is there a strong possibility that my hard drive is toast?

Thanks, any help and guidance would be appreciated.
 
Thanks for the tip but yes I tried opening firmware and by holding Command-Option-O-F but my computer just plays the opening chime and shows a white screen while it spins/grinds on the unreadable dvd in the drive... any other suggestions? I wonder if I have a technician open up the imac and physically remove the disc, if that will solve the problem?
 
Some have reported success by using credit cards on either side of the jammed disc to clamp and pull a disc while ejecting. Even using one card to jam the disc as it tries to remount should work.
 
CMD + O + F only works on OpenFirmware based Macs (PPC models, not intel). To eject the cdrom on boot, press and hold the mouse button.
 
imac fixed!

just to update and provide closure on this matter... I had the computer technician at my work look at my imac and he was able to fish out the stuck dvd out of the drive using a credit card. Once out, the computer proceeded to boot up normally so everything is fine - what a relief!

As soon as I got the imac home, I backed up the hard drive so now I'm safe and after this experience I'll be diligent in backing it up more frequently.
 
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