My new MacBook OR How to manually eject a CD from your MacBook Pro

March 16, 2007
Categories: Hardware, IT & Administration
Tags: ,

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. ;)

  1. 15 Responses to “My new MacBook OR How to manually eject a CD from your MacBook Pro”

  2. By LtFlux on Mar 19, 2007

    is it bad that, because of work, i know about and understand most of what you just wrote? oy.

  3. By Dusty Reagan on Mar 20, 2007

    What a nerd! ;)

  4. By Matt on Jul 2, 2008

    Hey thanks! Wasted 30mins before found your comment. Nice.

  5. By ernest on Aug 7, 2008

    clever! very clever

  6. By Nick on Oct 5, 2008

    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!

  7. By Mark on Mar 15, 2009

    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!!!!

  8. By Belle on May 11, 2009

    Hi i can’t eject my cd in my macbook…please teach how. I did what you’ve said but it didn’t work.

  9. By KTd on Aug 4, 2009

    Thanks. Helped me a lot :)

  10. By andrew on Aug 14, 2009

    Well!! You can restart the whole macbook and then keep pressing the eject button until the cd comes out.

  11. By tasha on Sep 8, 2009

    My new mak book pro wouldn’t eject the tray. I have presses the eject button. It just won’t eject :( Please help

  12. By Joel on Sep 16, 2009

    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.

  13. By Aman on Oct 1, 2009

    so is it possible to make boot camp work for u and get XP working for free?

  14. By cannot restart my macbook even taken out battery on Dec 28, 2009

    does anyone know how to restart a macbook
    I have a completely forzen unit

  15. By Rooster on Dec 29, 2009

    Right on!

  16. By gianluca borza on Jan 31, 2010

    cheers man. much appreciated

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