Brand spanking new iBook not mounting music CDs

karavite

karavite

Registered
Hi, via 600 miles distance I convinced my friend to buy a new iBook and he went right out and picked up a 14" G4 iBook from Compusa (yea - another switcher!). He called me when he got it home and I walked him through some stuff with the finder and OS X - he loves it.

We went on (via phone) to insert a music CD and nothing happened - it would not mount on the desktop let alone iTunes. We tried another music CD and the same thing - nothing. We restarted and tried it again - nothing. We loaded a software CD and it mounted right up. We tried more music CDs and none would show up in the finder, desktop or iTunes. Yes, system prefs are set to have music CDs open iTunes and iTunes prefs are set up to show songs on CD insert.

Again, inserting the music CD won't show it on the desktop or in the Finder oe even launch iTunes, but (and I forgot to mention this) I am 90% sure the very first music CD did launch iTunes because he had to set up his iTunes preferences and when he finished this, the CD did not show up in iTunes.

Is there some little dumb thing we are missing here? Thanks in advanced. My friend is going to call Apple in the morning.
 
I found this thread relating to PEOF errors and other strange things with CDs not mounting, but it is not quite the same.

http://www.mac-upgrade.com/cgi-bin/forums/cutecast.pl?forum=1&thread=219

I found another old 10.2.6 thread where a system would not read music CDs, but only on one single user account - other accounts would read the music CDs - sadly no answer on that one. Weird huh?

Since my friends Mac is 1 day old, do you think he should just return it and get another one? That's what I'm leaning toward suggesting, though I'm sure Compusa has a restocking fee for a flat out return and may give him grief on an exchange. System reinstall seems logical, but hey, it is brand new and a $1500 purchase - I would expect this to mean something in our consumer driven world and would think he should be able to get a machine that reads music CDs right out of the box.
 
Open System Preferences and click CDs & DVDs.
Choose an action from the two pop-up menus for music CDs and picture CDs.
Close the window to save your settings.

To play a music CD automatically when you insert it, you also need to make this setting in iTunes preferences.
 
bobw said:
Open System Preferences and click CDs & DVDs.
Choose an action from the two pop-up menus for music CDs and picture CDs.
Close the window to save your settings.

To play a music CD automatically when you insert it, you also need to make this setting in iTunes preferences.
Click to expand...

Thanks, but no, that was not it. I'm not that un-savvy! :) My first message states we checked system prefs for CDs, but I guess I didn't make that as clear as I could have. This was some type of software problem. He ended up calling Apple and they finally put him through to a senior tech. They had him delete various files. My friend is not very computer savvy so did not really pay attention or recorded what they said, but he recalled something like "kernal cache and some other stuff." Once he deleted these files (which ones, I guess we will never know) and restarted, his computer mounted music CDs and all is well.

I might as well leave the post up for any with the same problem. Any ideas why this would happen the first time a new computer was loaded with a music CD (with no installed software - fresh as could be right from Apple)?
 
Hm. I was thinking maybe the music cds could have been copy protected. Those don't always read on macs. :-/
 
Maybe it was the kernel extensions file the tech had him delete. Those keep track of what extensions get loaded - maybe the extension for music CDs wasn't loading up. Deleting the cache file for 'em would make the kernel reload everything, I believe.

You need to restart when doing that, too, so it sounds good to me, at least. :D
 
cd /System/Library/
sudo rm -r Extensions.kextcache
sudo rm -r Extensions.mkext
 
Hmm- well, glad (in a way) that this isn't an isolated problem. I hope Apple knows what is wrong and fixes it - not a good impression for first time Mac buyers! I'll keep you updated if the problem reoccurs on my friends iBook since he did not do a reintsall.

Also, for what it is worth, he did run the 10.3.1 update the minute he turned on the machine for the first time. After that he loaded his first music CD, iTunes booted, then failed to show the music CD in iTunes and the music CD also failed to mount on the desktop.
 
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