Imac will not accept DVD's or CD's

I'd suggest looking at a 3rd part DVD, some can be bought online for half the price of the external Apple SuperDrive and unlike the Apple one they actually work with older iMac's.

It could cost a small fortune to replace the internal DVD.

Just check first on compatibility.

I discovered today that my Ghostbuster DVD didn't work screamsssss. Annoyed, i thought I'd try another commercial DVD as it worked fine only a few weeks prior. Nothing. It spins then spits the dvd out or the DVD gets stuck. That makes me mad because once again, I bought this mac because I thought they were supposed to be better quality than pc's. Yeah right. So far no call back from apple. arghhhhh

Model Name: iMac

Model Identifier: iMac12,2

Processor Name: Intel Core i5

Processor Speed: 3.1 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 4

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 6 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Oh. My. God, it worked. Thank you, thank you. Is it ideal that I have to turn the monitor on it's back, no, but if it means I don't have to send my mac back, I'm happy. Mind you, I have apple warranty, so I guess I should use it.

I have a question for Apple. They are pulling drives from their computers and then have the audacity to sell you an external at an inflated price. This overpriced drive then doesn't work. I mean, am I being unreasonable to expect a 25+ year old technology, such as a cd-rom to work correctly? They then come up with the genius idea of being able to use cd-rom on another computer utilizing network resources. So, here is my question...if I were to upgrade all of my hardware to Apple, then how in the **** would I be able to read a cd-rom. Am I supposed to go buy a Windows machine so that I can use my Mac to do the huge task of ripping a cd? I have steadily lost interest, patience and confidence in Apple. I currently own over 25+ Apple products ranging from ipads all the way up to Mac Pro's. and I find myself more disappointed with each purchase. You can take this to the OS too. They haven't really made any major advances in their OS, but continue to rearrange things....perhaps rename it...repackage it and sell it to you. So, you can take all the things you liked about earlier OS's and throw them out the window, because an apple genius decided it would work better the new way.

I never thought I would say this, but I think I am going to be making the move back to Windows. At least, with windows I know I am going to be disappointed, but at least I only pay half the price. I hate to say it, but I am going to have to...I wish Steve Jobs were still with us. It seems they have lost their idealism of plain, easy and straightforward.

I have the same problem with all in this thread....Mac will not accept CD / DVD discs. I note that some have solved there problem by placing the monitor on it's back, side upside down. It will not work with. Th monitor in the position it is meant to be. This is so you can sit in front and use it like any computer. I have bought an external CD Drive and works fine. I will not pay the price to have the CD drive fixed by Apple. Apple ave not put drives with their new computers because they don't want you to use CD's. they want you to buy your music exclusively through iTunes. Give up they will not fix it for free.

Can I add that I have had this problem for months, cleaning etc didn't help. Tilting the screen back fixed the problem for me. Thanks a lot 🙂

I had similar problem to all on forum. 21.5 Imac just stopped sucking in any dvd's or cd's. No reason for it other than a recent regular update (10.8.xx). Couldnt get any system tools to wake it up. Decided to backup to time machine and pull the Imac apart to change the superdrive.

SOLUTION- Before backing up I just happened to click on the apple sign-> about this mac -> more info and clicked on the 'storage' tab to see how much of hard disk was full.........amazed if the superdrive didnt buzz itself into life again in order to be shown on the storage report. Works as before no problems.

Disk utilities didnt do this for me, must be the subroutine that this particular profiler uses. Gives the superdrive a kick in the ***.

Hope this helps someone as another option before pulling the screen off and bricking the Imac.

I have an early 2009 iMac that I recently upgraded to 10.8.4. This was a clean install from 10.7.5 as I was attempting to get rid of a lot of cruft that's been following me around from before I recieved this machine. Anyway, I was attempting to reintall my copy of Adobe CS5 from their install DVD's and discovered that my internal (original) Superdrive was completely dead. It wouldn't read/mount any disk. In fact, when I looked at the system info, it said no disc-burning device was attached and the SATA entry showed an unknown device.

After poking around a bit, I found I was able to get the drive to appear in system info and in disk utility by restarting the machine. I had also reset the PRAM and SMC. However, any disk I inserted would wind up stuck as the drive would die again, disappearing from the system info. Checking the console, I noticed that I was getting an error message from the kernel stating that "COMRESET has failed!" and that the superdrive was being disconnected. I thought this might indicate a hardware failure but just to double check, I booted into my windows partition and tried the drive there. It worked flawlessly.

In sum, I feel pretty sure there is a driver issue here. The drive works flawlessly in my windows partition. It was working under 10.7.4 for me, although I admit I used it very infrequently. The behavior I'm seeing (superdrive disappearing from sys info and disk utility when a DVD or CD is inserted with the "COMRESET has failed!" message appearing in the console and the DVD/CD stuck in the drive, reappearing after restart/PRAM/SMC reset) is for me,at least, all too reproducible. How best to bring this to the attention of Apple engineers and maybe get a new driver out of them?

Hello DoctorDad

I think that's a very good comment. I think also that you can wait a long time for any Apple engineer to respond. They want us all to go to iTunes and rent and buy movies off 'em. Not watch our old stuff on DVD drives.

I really think so. How many thousands of comments are here? How many replies from the dear corporation?

Zero.

I might try your idea though..

Got tired of continually reinserting my DVD, just to have it make a few noises and spit it back out.

Here is my solution:

Make sure there is no programme running that requires any type of DVD.

Then inserted an unused BLANK DVD (I uesed "SONY DVD-R for VIDEO 120min").

The DVD drive reads that for a few seconds then will either (1.) eject it, or (2.) show message:

[You inserted a blank DVD. Choose an action from the pop-up menu or click Ignore]

Just click 'Eject'

Then immediately afterwards insert movie DVD and bang! reads it like magic. Works everytime! Try it and see.

Don't ask me how it works, maybe the blank DVD resets or "cleans" it somehow; but anyway simple solution which keeps me from having to replace my old iMac 2008. Good luck with yours.

This situation is ridiculous - so many with similar problems. I am sure that some of our optical drives are thoroughly dead but some are not. I followed the advice of people who tilted their monitors on to their backs (i.e. back of monitor on the desk with the screen facing up) when loading a DVD and - voila! - it loaded. In the meantime, I have ordered a third party DVD reader/writer and will make do with what I have.. I hope this works for you.

After countless trouble with my DVD drive on a late 2009 27'' iMac I see now that I am not the only one.

It is ridiculous to see something like 300 complaints of the same kind in this thread.

I am so disappointed!

Is there still hope that it is just a driver issue and Apple will do stg about it?

I doubt it by now, since this thread is 3 years old and gets longer and longer without a solution.

VERY DISAPPOINTING. 😟

While there have been a number of DVD problems in the iMac and I agree its an issue I'm not sure if its that high. How many iMac's would Apple have sold over the last 3 years?

I do agree there needs to be a solution from Apple, even if it's a software change that allows their external DVD to work with older iMac's. So customers don't have to go to 'cheap' a 3rd party one to get it working.

I'm glade my 2012 iMac doesn't have built in DVD and I really don't miss it but it's nice to know I have options if the need arises. I just wish that was the same for others in trouble.

I just wanted to say that this was a big issue for me and the tilting of my computer helped BUT I also purchased an air duster and dispite the fact that the sideways CD shouldn't get dusty I decided to spray it with an air duster anyways and it solved my problem. I can play DVDs and burn CDs now with no trouble.

Dusty iMac DVD Player...

Problem: DVD Player wouldn't activate at all when I stuck the DVD into it. Tried multiple DVD's.

Attempted using the "Show CD" solution from Dogwalkerbr. Didn't work for me, but I did leave that setting on.

Attempted blowing in it, but there was a 1-way-valve-style-flap of felt or something, so see solution below:

SOLUTION:

I stuck the DVD about halfway into the slot, so the protective flap opened a little. I blew hard through the tiny opening several times, even putting my lips all the way onto it for more power. After that, it worked.

It was dust. THANK THE MAC GODS !

And thank you for all your solutions and attempts to resolve this together. Helped me to figure out I had a dust problem.