Q: Imac will not accept DVD's or CD's

My imac will not burn CD's from itunes or iphoto or from a desktop burn folder. It will burn CDs happily from Logic, Waveburner and will burn DVDs from iDVD. I have worked round this up to now the machine as I live in Cumbria and the nearest Mac agent is Newcastle or Glasgow. I have a 3 year Applecare agreement.Any suggestions apart from trekking the thing 50 miles gratefully appreciated.

I had posted about a similar problem to this and then found a solution that worked for me. Maybe it will for others as well: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

Many thanks for your reply - I reset the PRAM reset and itunes now burns cds but the burn folder on the desktop still does not recognise blank cds. At least it is a move forward though so thank you again.

I am experiencing the same problem, can not burn DVDS at all, Apple seem to think its just a coincidence that this happened after SL update, looking at all the threads they need to do something about it.

The problem with my cd drive (Matshita DVD-R UJ-875) is that it doesn't accept blank CDs and some audio CDs.

I haven't checked different blank cd brands recently yet but had a large stash of Maxell blanks that don't work anymore. It worked when I first bought the iMac for up to a year or so during that period I burned music on hundreds of blank Maxell CDs, I haven't for the past year because I bought an iTouch.

But I have done over 3 hours of research with audio cds, results as follows:

All CDs connected with Sony Music Entertainment worked (exc. Sony BMG)
Atlantic CDs worked 50%
Polygram 1992 James Brown worked
Virgin 1995 Lenny Kravitz worked (not Virgin combined with EMI K-os Joyful Rebellion album did not work)
An independent record label Wordsound worked

All others didn't work - BMG, RCA, MCA, Virgin/EMI, Mercury, Capitol, Universal etc.

If you have the same problem please check your CD collection carefully.

I think Apple owes everyone a big apology for charging to replace this drive and should refund immediately. It is definitely a media/ software update problem. The drives should be recalled free of charge onsite or the software for the driver updated.

I'm having the same problem however it happened right after I upgraded to Snow Leopard. It's an early Intel iMac 3 1/2 years old? Still,.. seems odd to 'suddenly' fail but it looks like others have been having this problem for a while.

Mine reads and writes cds, but never accepts dvds any more. When I insert dvds, it tries to read, but after making some noises for a minute or two, spits out (blank/data/movie). I used to play and burn dvds without any problems before, but no more. APPLE must do something about this!

I have only owned macs for the last twenty years so I have no complaints but this is really frustrating. I bought a Snow Leopard family pack and it installed fine on three computers. Went back to install additional items and then my imac would not accept any dvds. The weird part is that it still plays cds. I've seen this problem of the 10-30 seconds spinning dvds which then eject, all over the Internet. Even Apple admitted there was a problem.

(Officially labeled 10C514f, the first 10.6.2 build included tweaks to everything from the Address Book to Bluetooth and USB drivers, Xtype, AppleScript and OpenCL, according to an AppleInsider piece from last week. Citing people familiar with the build, the 10.6.2 update was said to feature a handful of pre-release (known) issues, “including hang-ups with the DVD player, crashing of the parental controls preference pane, and a glitch where the system does not recognize an optical drive.”) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mac-OS-X-10-6-2-Build-10C519f-Seeded-to-Developer s-Seed-Notes-123977.shtml

So I thought that when I installed 10.6.2 it would be fixed but no such luck. Have reset Pram deleted appropriate preferences, let it sit unplugged for a while and everything else everyone listed. I wanted to purchase a new imac on the day it came out while simultaneously selling mine but that was the day I installed SL and killed my optical drive. 21,000 views for a hardware problem is a lot, isn't it. Has anyone had success fixing this?
Thanks

terhand wrote:
Has anyone had success fixing this?

Yes, by getting the optical drive replaced.

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with the optical drive, as it has always burnt cd's from Logic or waveburner and now burns from itunes. But it will still not burn from the desktop burn folder.

Add me to this topic, of which my new imac will not read movie dvd's
and even apple snow leopard install os10.6.
Sometimes it takes 6-10 times of re-inserting the disc.
After that I give up.
So I thought I would come to discussions and see if anyone had any resolutions.
I could not believe how many people have this problem. (Stunned)!
My imac is new April 2009.
There has to be someone as a liaison to apple to make them aware of this problem.
It's like getting a new car with no tires.
I enjoy watching movies on my imac as I don't have a high def tv.
Genius bar here I come.
So can anybody really tell me if this is software or the actual drive problem?
It is hard to believe this many people have a bad drive?
All reply's are appreciated.

JJ2327 wrote:
So can anybody really tell me if this is software or the actual drive problem?
It is hard to believe this many people have a bad drive?
All reply's are appreciated.

My opinion and experience with this problem tell me that you have a bad drive. Reference my posts earlier in this thread, such as:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9414866#9414866

Geoff

I have an issue with my new imac (1 week old) superdrive also, but seems slightly different.
Mine will not even accept any discs.

It makes a noise on system startup as if its trying to constantly accept a new disc when nothing there.
If i reboot the mac a second time i can get it to work for a short time, but then it stops accepting discs again.

Does this seem consistent with everyones issues?

No I would ask for a replacement from Apple for a one week old imac that doesn't accept discs and makes funny noises.

my new 27" imac chooses what discs it likes and doesn't like, for instance it will play transformers but will spit out dark knight. Not sure if it's a copyright issue or not, and the quality of play for the transformers dvd is horrible. Makes no sense.