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

36 thoughts on “My new MacBook OR How to manually eject a CD from your MacBook Pro

  1. 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!

  2. 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!!!!

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

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

  5. 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.

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

  7. 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!

  8. 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)

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. Spent a lot of time trying to trouble shoot my Mac Pro (2.33 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo), had trouble booting so I ran Disk Warrior and then for good measure, Tech Tools Deluxe.
    After that (never saw this before) when choosing “restart” which should start up from the hard drive, it would only boot (again and again) from the utility disc. And there was no apparent way to eject the disc (remember how handy paper clips used to be?) Even trying to start in safe boot would not work. Then I found this hold-down-the-mouse workaround and voila! worked quickly and perfectly!! Great addition to the bag O tricks! thanks.

  12. From the depths of my being, thank you. I was very frustrated that I couldn’t remove my Paragon boot cd from the drive.

    Now I am a happy man.

    Bill

  13. My MacBook won’t restart because it says the DVD is “in use”. There is a finder window that is open that says its Copying the DVD, and it won’t let me click the “Stop Copying” button in the window (its gray-ed out). I can’t log-out, restart, or use the hard restart button. Any suggestions??

  14. when i insert a cd to my macbook laptop it reject itself automatically and i dont know why please help me to solve this problem ….thanks

  15. Best option to perform a CD Eject, when it is stuck , try command line

    drutil eject.
    This worked for me.

  16. I was in the process of loading a greeting card program in Windows 7 onto my Macbook via Boot Camp. There were multiple disks, and I couldn’t get Disk 1 to eject so I could insert 2, 3, etc. Holding down mouse button didn’t work; couldn’t restart in middle of program. I clicked on the Windows button, then I opened “Devices and printers.” Clicked on the DVDRW drive. At top of the window, there’s an option that says “eject”. Clicked on it, then clicked on DVD RW Drive; out came the disk. I have installed all four disks.

  17. HOLY GOOD JESUS CHRIST! I COULD KISS YOU.
    I HAVE BEEN SITTING HERE FOR 2 AND A HALF HOURS PRESSING AND HOLDING DOWN THE EJECT BUTTON!!!
    THIS WAS SO FRUSTRATING.
    thank you so much, this forum got straight to the point, easy to undertand. And it actually worked.
    i’ll give this a 10/10 *thumbs up*

  18. Can someone help me? I used bootcamp to try and install windows 7. I am in the installer for windows but for some reason I can’t install it on any partitions. Now I just want to go from windows installer back to how my Mac was before. I need to remove the installer disc but how do I do that? Please help or my dad is going to kill me.

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