[Psychonaut]

I've got a CDRW stuck in my 12" PB's drive. The Finder and Toast don't recognize it. What can I do?

[AssassyN]

Try Restarting your computer, and upon it booting up, continuously hold the Eject key, and if that fails, reboot again and hold down F12 in the same manner. If neither works, reboot and hold "C", and it should try to read the CD. If it still doesn't work out, call AppleCare...best of luck!

[The Placid Casual]

Is there still an emergency hardware eject key?

You used to be a be to put a paperclip into the right hand side of the drive, and it would 'emergency eject' the offending disk... may be worth looking in the manual...

Good luck,

Marc

[parsec_kadets]

I think holding the mouse button during startup works as well.

[nayr x]

I don't think the CD-RW/DVDrom combo drives have the manual eject button (which i think is stupid...)

here

At least thats what it sounds like...

[iWrite]

I've dealt with this before.

First thing to do is to take a paper or cardboard THIN business card and try inserting it inside the drive ON TOP of the disk.

Shut the system off. It will try to eject the disk either at shut down or start up -- while it's doing this make sure you hold the business card in place and are slightly depressing the card so that the CD is free and clear of the upper frame. It might come out.

If that doesn't work then you go to option #2 which requires a Torx 8 screwdriver and a butter knife and a pair of tweezers.

Turn your system off and turn it over. Remove the batter. Remove the bottom by removing the screws. Next, once the bottom is off, look to the left and you'll see the drive right there. What you're doing to do is look on the right side of the drive and you're going to see a black plastic piece with ONE screw in it holding it in place. Remove that screw and remove the black plastic piece.

Now, position yourself someplace where you can hold the system while doing what I tell you to do: You're going to take the butter knife and EVER SO CAREFULLY LIFT THE FRONT EDGE OF THE DRIVE UP AND OUT OF THE POWERBOOK...JUST UNTIL THE SLOT IS FREE AND CLEAR.

Now, insert the butter knife into the opening and turn slightly so that the drive widens slightly then just try pulling the disk out with the tweezers and hopefully the gun isn't engaged and you can simply pull it out. That might be the case. However, if it doesn't simply pull out go to option #2.

Option #2. While the Powerbook is plugged in, you're going to start shutting it off and on and with the butter knife in place, insert it into the drive and turn it VERY GENTLY until the slot bows slightly and becomes larger (you can use something else also -- but it should only be large enough to SLIGHTLY widen it). Next, turn the system on and off and you'll hear and see the drive try to eject the disk -- hopefully. Get those tweezers ready and as soon as you see that disk move grab it with the tweezers and simply pull it out. You're doing it this way because sometimes the gun (the arm of the reader) is engaged and the CD is locked into place and when it's trying to eject the gun has released and you can yank the CD out.

Of course, once you get it out simply put the drive back in, put the plastic bumper back in place, put the bottom back in place.

Hopefully you'll get it out in one of these three ways. It's always worked for me.

Remember, don't force anything -- always be gentle.

Good luck!

[Lateralus]

Last time this happened to me (Yesterday), I went into iTunes and hit the Eject CD button in the bottom right of the iTunes window.

Out the CD came.

[Mastrap]

Check out the Apple support forum for the 12", search for 'stuck CD'. There are a couple of things that can be done without dismantling your machine or sticking butter knifes into the drive. With all respect to iWrite, I would never recommend sticking anything metallic into the drive. It's like sticking semtex in the microwave, a recipe for disaster.
If you have to use use stiff cardboard. Fold it over to make cardboard 'tweezers' and carefully jiggle the CD free. That worked for me.

Some people have also reported that putting the PB to sleep and then waking it up fixes the problem.

[iWrite]

I'm just saying what I've done and it worked.

Caveat emptor.

The best thing to do, of course, is to take it to Apple or have them pick it up.

Besides, I didn't get the part that it was a 12-inch model. I was describing a technique for a Titanium.

[coolmacdude]

Originally posted by NAYR X:
I don't think the CD-RW/DVDrom combo drives have the manual eject button (which i think is stupid...)

Holding down the mouse (or trackpad) button during startup is the manual eject.

[Podolsky]

when this happened to me on a tibook, turned out that there were 2 cd in the slot! I got them out carefully and all was well. good luck.

[m@]

It's like sticking semtex in the microwave, a recipe for disaster.

This would only melt it, not detonate it!

Anyway back on topic, sometimes when I get a CD or DVD stuck in my PBG4 drive a good firm squeeze of the case sorts things out. However would say if it keeps happening get apple to sort it out whilst it is under warrantee.

[phobos]

The paper tweezers and stuff like that work only on the slot loading imacs. The drive on powerbook has very little space to do anything with tweezers. On my old imac dvd's used to stuck all the time so I'm an expert on this subject....

Not so long a go I had a pretty bad case of a stuck cd on my powerbook. What I did is that I booted to open firmware. On open firmware you can do as many eject trys as you want. Do a restart and press apple key + shift + o+f. You will be prompted on a grey screen with some stuff printed. When was your machine created etc. Now type "eject cd". I typed the command 20 times or so and still nothing. Then I shut down the machine for 5 minutes or so and then booted again. The cd magically ejected!!!! I guess that what was needed to happen for the cd to eject has happened with the 20 or so trys and the one big eject try after the startup. The most forceful ejection happens when you startup your machine. I don't know why this happens but all the ejections with software are with a less force. Hope this helps.