So… there’s a disc stuck in our disc drive tray and now it won’t eject or play. Nothing we have tried has worked, and anyone who might possibly be able to help is not home. I think we may be the only people in the county who are actually home today.
Has anybody else out there had this problem? And if so, how did you solve it–short of getting a new computer, or shooting someone?
Look carefully on the front of the disk drive and you will probably see a very small circular hole. Unbend a paper clip and stick the end up it into the hole and it should push the disk drive open. You might have to apply some trial and error to finding the right angle to insert the end of the paper clip, but when you find a spot that gives you a bit of resistance push steadily and the door should open. FWIW, a DVD drive costs about $20, and can be replaced with the simplest of mechanical skills.
We tried the paper clip thing with the little hole, and nothing happened. Patty says oh, you’ll have to disconnect everything and bring it in to Office Depot and they’ll fix it in a minute (barring the 90 or 100 minutes waiting for it) and they bring it back home and apply my nonexistent skills to reconnecting everything. Then it will probably explode.
I did have that problem and my husband did fix it. He is out town but I called him and this is what he said. Take a paper clip and unfold it. On the bottom of the the tray/door that is supposed to come out there should be a little hole that you can put the the clip in. Put it in and push until the tray starts to come out. When it does grab it with your fingers and pull it out.
We’ve tried that, but I’ll try again.
Keep goofing with it. You have to have the paper clip pointing in just the right direction. There will be one spot where you feel like you are pushing against something and it takes a pretty solid push to open the door.
Voila! Thank you, Mark–I switched to a sturdier paper clip, pushed harder, and out she came!
You deserve an extra cat video!
The first time I did that, I was surprised by how much force it required to open the drawer. Believe it or not, there is even a special titanium tool made for such a task, but appear clips do the trick.
My problem was, I needed a stronger paper clip than the one I was using.
This won’t be helpful, but is in response to your picture. My comp had a blue screen problem. I watched a few youtube videos to learn how to repair it when one in particular seemed like the guy knew what he was doing. So I watched it and took notes. When he was done, he said “Okay, let me show you how it works.” It didn’t work. So he took a hammer and spent several minutes breaking the laptop into small pieces. I’m sure, with all the good advice from the commenters on this page, it won’t come to that for you – or did it? – lol.
I’m printing this page in case the same thing happens to me so that I’ll get GOOD advice and instructions.
I was pretty sure “Unknowable” would know what to do. And when I finally got the tray open again, you could see at a glance that the disc hadn’t been inserted properly. Happily, nothing was damaged.