CD Tray Keeps Opening

[signal49]

My CD/DVD drive was working fine an hour ago. I walked away, came back and the tray was open. I closed it, the CD icon didn't appear on the desktop, and then the tray opened on its own. I've been trying to trick it into working (no luck) and searching around on the web for ideas but I'm only finding similar problems on PCs, not on Mac. (Yay for Macs, bad for me!) The tray then closed itself after about 15 minutes of leaving it alone. I thought it may have fixed itself so I tried another CD but still no luck. And it just opened again. It's playing with me.

I looked in the Apple System Profiler and it shows that the drive is installed. That's about as much as I know how to look for. I'm running OS 10.2.8. Any ideas?

 

[jimoblak]

Do you have any tasks running that might be triggering the drive tray? Does this happen after a reboot?

Bubble gum might work here.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[signal49]

Yes it still happens after a reboot. There shouldn't be any tasks going that would be triggering it...

 

[signal49]

LOL
I just read your last line! Yeah I'm thinking bubblegum too....

 

[signal49]

So, seriously, does anyone have any suggestions? I can't do any more of my jobs without the CD drive and our Mac tech hasn't called us back yet!

 

[imeldesign]

I had a similar problem with an older mac (beige G# os9)when the CD drive suddenly went bad. The cd drive kept opening and closing trying to mount a cd. I cleaned a cd and then blew out the drive with some canned air. It worked for a couple of more days then the problem returned.

Just to see, I replaced the drive with a regular (non-apple) cd drive from a PC and the problem went away. However, since it is an non apple drive I can't boot to the CD.

 

[signal49]

We called a couple more techs in the area and they both told us that the drive is bad. Something in me still thinks it's an internal system problem, but I guess we're going to have to just replace it. Thanks for the input. I didn't think you could put a non-Apple drive in a Mac... will it read CDs but not boot from them, or does it not work at all?

 

[kertusa]

signal49 and imeldesign,

Lots of non-Mac cd drives will work and boot in a Mac. The best way to find out which ones will work is check

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com

Great site full of user reviews where people have tried making these things work. Easily searched to find out if a particular drive will work in your particular Mac. Check it out, huge frustration saver.

Good luck, post if a new drive does not fix it.

 

[signal49]

Thanks kertusa

Will let you know what happens!

 

[duncdude]

I agree with kertusa (again!)

Since Mac's now use PC components this is quite easy to do


Kind Regards
Duncan

 

[signal49]

You're right again! The tech ended up taking the drive out of our PC (which was locking up when we inserted CD-RWs into it), put it into my Mac and then put an external USB CD drive in the PC. Now they both work like a charm! Thanks everyone

 

[imeldesign]

yes, that is what i did...see original post...unfortunately the brand of drive I used will not allow me to BOOT to a CD. Otherwise, it works perfectly fine. I will replace the drive eventually with one that allows booting. No hurry though, it is used as a print server only.