My Mac Spits Out DVDs
Recently my PowerMac G5 tower running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger began ejecting all DVD discs. It will accept CDs, but it immediately ejects every DVD I insert: blank or preformatted, video or computer. Booting up off an older operating system on a different partition didn’t change this. It feels like a hardware problem, though I’m not 100% sure of that yet. Any suggestions? (For obvious reasons, running tools that are themselves provided on DVD is not an option.)
Update
It does indeed seem to be a hardware problem. I went down to the Apple Store at Fashion Island and picked up a Lacie external DVD burner, which, so far, seems to be working fine. Reinstalling the operating system and all data, by contrast, had no effect on the internal drive. One of these days I should probably just swap out the internal drive, but right now I can’t really be bothered, especially since the recent move and frequent travel have inspired me to switch to my Macbook as my primary machine.
January 15th, 2008 at 10:57 PM
I have never used Macs … but this is what I would suggest doing:
1) Try an external DVD drive – if that works then it is likely a hardware issue.
2) Try adding a replacing/internal DVD drive (assuming this can be easily done on a Mac) ….
or remove the suspect drive and try using it in another machine
January 16th, 2008 at 9:37 AM
I’m inclined to agree with your speculation of a hardware problem. I used to have a PlayStation 2 with the opposite problem: DVD-based games were fine, but CD-based games would generally go straight to the Red Cloud Of Doom.
Suspect you’re going to be visiting your local Genius Bar. Fortunately, PowerMacs are pretty amenable to having their optical drives replaced, IIRC.