DVD Drives not working after Snow Leopard install

Now this proofs that these issues must be snow leopard related (software related) right?

Well, yes & no. The problem seems likely related to the instance of Snow Leopard installed on your MBP, but not necessarily to Snow Leopard in general. IOW, there may be something wrong with the OS installed on your HD, such as a damaged or missing extension that supplies DVD/CD functionality.

The usual test for this sort of thing is to reinstall the OS but obviously you can't do that if the optical drive ejects the Snow Leopard DVD at startup, preventing you from booting from it. It isn't clear if anyone tried that. If not, try this:

1. Shut down your MBP.

2. Insert the Snow Leopard DVD part way into the slot.

3. Start up the MBP.

4. As soon as you hear the startup chime, quickly insert the DVD fully & then hold down the "C" key.

5. Continue holding down the key for several seconds after the gray screen with the Apple logo & spinner appears.

6. Hopefully, your MBP will not eject the disc & will start up into the Snow Leopard installer. (This will take a minute or two so be patient.)

7. Follow the prompts to reinstall the OS.

If this does not work (& it has not already been tried), Reset your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM & see if anything changes.

Also if it has not already been tried, see if there is any difference when starting up in Safe Mode.

BTW, it isn't unusual for AppleCare customer support or Apple Store personnel not have heard of problems that affect relatively few users. So while it may not be of much consolation to you, yours appears to be a rare one.

TarasVWZ wrote:
I have 1 SuperDrive. It burns and plays CD's just fine after Snow Leopard, but DVD's won't even mount onto the desktop. This is not an hardware problem and I can't believe how struthious Apple's response team seems to be on this issue.

Do not assume just from burning & playing CD's that the drive hardware is fine. Optical drives use different optical read/write assemblies for CD's & DVD's because each type of optical media requires a different wavelength (color) of light. Thus, it is possible that the drive will work with one type of disc but not the other due to hardware damage or defect.

I do not know what "struthious" is supposed to mean, but if you believe your issue is related to the OS, send Apple Product Feedback about it if you want Apple to know about it. The Discussions forums are for user-to-user dialogs.

Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM

Intel-based iMac, Intel-based Mac mini: How to reset the System Management Controller

BTW, the test for the safe boot is to see what happens while the Mac is operating in safe mode, not after you restart in normal mode.

Message was edited by: R C-R

I'm afraid you may have had earlier problems with either your harddisk, superdrive or logic board that came to the surface when you installed SnowLeopard which caused this behaviour. I suggest you bring your Mac to an authorized repair centre.

Take it in for repair? That is a terrible suggestion. It's happened to me to too — I have new Intel Xeon and installed second Pioneer DVD drive via SATA port on motherboard and now it's not recognizing it either. This must be software related.

am also having this problem. the day before installing SL the dvd burners worked fine on both my MBP and desktop. no more for either now.

the desktop plays dvds, but can't burn them. (burner is three months old.) and, no it's not a dirty lens or pram reset issue. can't burn any disc regardless of manufacturer, though dvds pose no problem on friend's 10.5 system.

worse, on the 2.33 MBP, the dvd player is no longer even recognized. ("No disc burning device was found.") all was fine before SL install, not so fine after.

cupertino, i think we have a problem here.

My internal drive reads and writes as usual, but since installing Snow Leopard 10.6, my external DVD read/write drive that I use often to burn DVDs because it is a lot faster is not recognized. It won't mount a DVD. System Profiler recognizes it as a OWC firewire drive, but Toast doesn't recognize the drive (it does recognize the internal drive, though). My firewire port is OK since I have a back-up drive and an analog to digital converted hooked up to it and they both work as before. Gotta be something in the 10.6 software. My Epson R280 printer stopped printing DVD labels, too My printer needed updated software Epson said, so I did that including a new version of the CD Print program to version 2.0, but it still won't print the CD labels like it used to.

Someone on another discussion thread mentioned that Snow Leopard "breaks compatibility" with some firewire drives. Switched my external burner from firewire to USB and it is now recognized as a burner/DVD player. Apple should fix this as not all burners do both firewire USB.

I have the same problem! But when I insert a DVD or software disc and restart from the disc it runs perfectly (os x, disk warrior, etc.) but when I try to burn or run something it won't mount it!

All of this happened after snow leopard was installed and upgraded.

I hope there is a fix.

I have an iMac

If possible change the drive to a USB connection. My external burner is both USB and Firewire 400. Snow Leopard would not let it mount as a Firewire drive, but does let it mount and burn and read as a USB drive. Even in firewire mode, System Profiler recognized it, but that's as far as it would go.

Have been running without trouble and had total ability to burn disc images to DVD until SL installation. after installation, every burn attempt fails to complete, give me an unrecoverabl, unable to restart error. I does burn data to the disc, but fails at some point near the end of the burn wich renders the disc a "coaster". I put my spare HDD back in wich was running 10.5, the problem exists with that drive also. My next step was to load a fresh drive with 10.5, even then the problem exists. I find it hard to believe that the drive failed exactly when SL was installed, more likely that the installation changed a hardware setting, or installed a firmware update which cause the problem. As I am a repair tech, I have done a ton of reaserch on the subject, and I find that litterally 10's of thousands of people have had the same issue after the SL upgrade. Come on Apple, I always heard you were better than Microsoft, but as everyone can see there is a problem. Get working on the fix and patch it just like Microsoft.

If you are a trained computer repair technician you should know very well that if the problem persists with two different OS versions & after resetting PRAM, then the OS version is not the problem. (How could it be, since nothing from one OS is involved when booting from another?)

I'm also not clear about being a repair tech has any bearing on researching the subject or what research would show that "litterally 10's of thousands of people have had the same issue." For one thing, there are at least two separate & distinct issues mentioned here; for another, most reports don't mention enough detail to determine if the issue they describe is related to the OS, to hardware problems, or to defective discs.

Add me to the list of trashed optical drives AFTER installing 10.6. It will still occasionally mount an audio CD (after what seems like a very long process of spinning/stopping/spinning). But no other discs I've tried seem to mount any more- they eventually get rejected and ejected.

I was having this problem as well and could not understand it. My dvd drives appeared in the hardware profile in about this mac under in the ATAPI section but not the disc burning section.

I was able to hold down the keyboard eject key right after the startup bong and have the drives eject, so since the boards were recognizing the hardware, clearly the drives not showing up in SL was software related.

I happened to look in the console and noticed it was taking a ton of hits from Little Snitch which is a mini firewall I use. ( http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html)

I tried to open the little snitch config and it told me the install was broken and to reinstall. I downloaded, reinstalled, and rebooted when it asked me after install.

i couldnt believe it but my drives appeared no problem.

im not saying its the solution, but it worked for me.

good luck everybody

I'm having this problem too after installing Snow Leopard. The only way I can access these disks from my MacBook Pro is using another DVD drive on my LAN, which doesn't work when I'm on the road.

Is there any indication that Apple is working on this problem?