My new MacBook OR How to manually eject a CD from your MacBook Pro
March 16, 2007
Categories: Hardware, IT & Administration
Tags: Apple, MacBook Pro
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. 
7 Responses to “My new MacBook OR How to manually eject a CD from your MacBook Pro”
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.
By Dusty Reagan on Mar 20, 2007
What a nerd!
By Matt on Jul 2, 2008
Hey thanks! Wasted 30mins before found your comment. Nice.
By ernest on Aug 7, 2008
clever! very clever
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!
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!!!!
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.