I just bought my first Mac. It’s a 2.33 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro 15inch model. It has taken me a little bit of time to get use to, but I’m starting to get the hang of it after I plugged in my favorite 2 button cordless mouse. Let me tell you, coming from a Windows background, right-click makes all the difference in the world.
Anyways. I’m working on setting up Windows XP using Boot Camp. Then I plan to use Parallels to quickly switch between OSX and my Boot Camp partition of Windows XP. By using a Boot Camp partition instead of a pure Parallels virtual machine, I can boot directly into Windows if I need more resources for playing games or whatnot.
To do all of this I had to slipstream my old copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 2. This requires creating a bootable CD. I thought I did everything correctly, but when Boot Camp Assistant restarted my Mac to install Windows, my Mac hung on boot-up. Turns out my CD burning software didn’t have all the features I needed. So now my Mac is stuck trying to load a boot CD that is incapable of booting. How the hell do I get the CD out to get back into OSX!? There is no manual mechanism to eject a CD on the MacBook Pro.
The Payoff
Do a hard restart. Then click and hold down the mouse button while the system boots up. Continue to hold down the mouse button until the CD ejects.
Totally intuitive. Not sure why I didn’t immediately think of that. 
is it bad that, because of work, i know about and understand most of what you just wrote? oy.
What a nerd!
Hey thanks! Wasted 30mins before found your comment. Nice.
clever! very clever
Ok, so this sounded so random that I went on to the next help page. I decided to try this while i was moving on to the next help page. It worked!!! I dont get it, but I am happy to comment! Thanks!
you have no idea how close i was to instant death!! my wife was ready to kill me over this one!! got the CD out and life is good again!! thanx for you rhelp!!!!
Hi i can’t eject my cd in my macbook…please teach how. I did what you’ve said but it didn’t work.
Thanks. Helped me a lot
Well!! You can restart the whole macbook and then keep pressing the eject button until the cd comes out.
My new mak book pro wouldn’t eject the tray. I have presses the eject button. It just won’t eject
Please help
So easy, I’ve wasted 4 hrs with other solutions. I was panicing because I’m 13 and $3000 was all my money, I’ve only just bought a MacBook pro, and in the first few hours this happens, thanks again.
so is it possible to make boot camp work for u and get XP working for free?
does anyone know how to restart a macbook
I have a completely forzen unit
Right on!
cheers man. much appreciated
i inserted a game that was not meant to be used in a mac into my macbook pro without thinking, and as result it kept trying to read the disk and it would not register. so i looked online and found this method of holding the mouse down while the computer is booting up and it worked instantly. thank you for saving my macbook!
Thank you for the tip. The wife is happy again.
you are a genious mate .i wasted almost an hour b4 i found ur post.
thanks a lot!!!!!!!!!!
Hmm… I wasted 10 min trying, and 30 min surfing for stuff to forget it, knowing I’d find that someone nice would have posted the simple solution. I did hit that eject button repeatedly for a bit
– What a Mac-newbie. Thanks!!!
(intuitive? not for PC users… looking for paper clips even… LOL)
What could be easier than just dragging the CD icon to the trash can?…
Oh I don’t know… maybe a real eject button?
The whole, restart while holding down the mouse button does not work out in the case where you need to load an old copy of windows for your upgraded version to install.
Hi! There is a cd stuck in my macbook. None of the traditional ways to manually eject the cd work. I have tried to reboot with touch pad and with option-command-O-F and have used Toast, iTunes and the disk utility to eject but nothing works.
Actually I never reach the place where you’re supposed to type eject cd as when I reboot (both ways) it just turns on like usual, asking me for my password and goes to the desktop.
I am considering actually opening the machine to remove the cd.
PLEASE HELP! Thank you in advance for your comments and suggestions.
It worked! Yay!!!
Open Terminal and type “drutil tray eject”
works every time.