Interesting problem--stuck CD crashes system.

Gwailo

Gwailo

B.A. Economics (Hon)
Here's a problem a friend of mine had with his new (2 week) iMac TFT 800MHz.

They had a stuck CD, which would not appear either on the Finder or in /volumes. The Media Eject button on the keyboard would not open the tray. Restarting to the Finder didn't help, and holding the mouse button at boot didn't open the tray.

Booting to the Startup Manager caused the system to hang (I believe because it was trying to check the CD for bootability but couldn't) so the watch never went away to let me boot to the HD.

Resetting the PRAM didn't help, so I reset the NVRAM and reflashed in Open Freeware. ">eject cd" in OF didn't do anything else either, just hung with no "ok".

In the Finder I switched to OS 9.2.2 in the preference pane (since their was only a single partition I couldn't change it with Startup Manager), which then caused the syste to crash completely. It would display the grey screen JUST before the happy mac icon, but never display the happy mac. I cold still interact with the system since i got a black cursor and could move it around the screen just fine.

I could then not boot to Console or to FireWire Mode, just Open Freeware or the Startu Manager, which was useless. I tried to boot from an external FW disk (bootable), and a iBook Snow (large screen) but it never appeared on the Startup Manager.

Resetting the PMU had no effect, which was my last resort.

I'm guessing either the motherboard or the CD drive is defective. Any ideas? Would you have tried anything else? BTW Open Firmware was at the sugestion of Apple Support.
 
I also removed LSApplications, LSClaimTypes, and LSSchemes from ~/Library/Preferences early on, before any of the PRAM stuff.
 
you tried typing "eject cd" in open firmware right?

That's really strange that the holding the mouse trick didn't work. I would guess that if the open firmware doesn't work, you problably have some defective hardware on your hands.:(
 
Does the new iMac have a manual eject paperclip hole? Most CD drives have this feature. You would probably have to flip down the CD door to get at it.
 
There's no manual eject button that I could find, and if Apple didn't tell me about it over the phone they're, well, :)
 
i could have swore there was one... someone had a similar problem like this...

anyways, if you live close to an Apple store, take it over there and they'll help out...

if not, call up apple... maybe they'll send ya a new one if that's defective...
 
dsnyder, thanks for the hint, maybe I'll do it on my own but the [quoteIf you follow this guide you do so entirely at your own risk. You should do this work with the iMac shutdown and disconnected from the power socket, for the safety of you and the Mac.[/quote] I wouldn't have done it on their machine, it still sounds risky. Basically you're not performing a real manual eject, you're forcing the gear to release, and I wonder what happens when you reboot and try to press the media eject button eehe

But thanks, I'll use it on mine if that ever happens! There is, however, no "real" manual eject button like on all the other CD drives in the world.
 
Same thing happened to me. It wasn't a "flaw" in the iMac but a flaw in the CD that caused the cd reader to not be able to read it. Still, I had to take the computer to an apple store to remove the CD. They had to gut the whole computer. Good grief.

-Rob
 
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