How force eject disc

I also have a computer with no OS installed.

What worked for me was to 1) hold down the option key on start-up until the disk/boot icons appear. 2) Then press the eject key (or F12) on the keyboard. Pressing eject on its own did not work.

Five ways to eject a stuck CD or DVD from the optical drive

Ejecting the stuck disc can usually be done in one of the following ways:

1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the left mouse button until the disc ejects.

2. Press the Eject button on your keyboard.

3. Click on the Eject button in the menubar.

4. Press COMMAND-E.

5. If none of the above work try this: Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following:

/usr/bin/drutil eject

If this fails then try this:

Boot the computer into Single-user Mode. At the prompt enter the same command as used above. To restart the computer enter "reboot" at the prompt without quotes.

As a tech support specialist for more than 20 years, I find CD/DVD eject problems to be among the most annoying feature of Apple computers, where the manual eject button is masked over by the frame.

I tried all of the above, repeatedly, for more than 20 minutes.

A co-worker walked by and said "Sometimes the disk hits the rubber dust seal on the way out and won't eject."

He was right!

I ran my thumbnail along the seal to spread it outward and the disk ejected on the next try.

It's not always software, people!

I just wanted to say "thank you" to jnmaloof. I'd tried every scrap of advice I could find online, as well as working with a customer service rep on the phone. Thanks to you, I've just cancelled my appointment at the Apple store for tomorrow. My 4-month-old son thanks you for sparing him a trip to Tyson's Corner that would almost certainly have tanked nap time. Much appreciated. The Option key worked a charm.

Ya- Hoo ! Running my finger along the disc slot (iMac24) did the trick (after all others failed..) Many thanks!

In my case I was trying to eject a music CD that I burned before. On top of the CD I pasted a CD Label describing the CD and its music contents. As it turned, a very small portion of the edge of the label (~ 0.5 mm) detached from the CD and folded backwards. This prevented a clean CD ejection, no matter what I did. One thing I noted was that as the computer (iMac) tried to eject, about 5 to 10 mm of the CD would come out for a couple of seconds and the CD would return in. At the moment the CD would become visible, I quickly grabbed and pulled it out without any problems. From now on I think I will not use labels on my CDs or simply use high quality labels specifically recommended for iMac.

Is it a USB mouse, or Wireless?

I just had this same issue. I restarted the Macbook 2007 in target mode from another mac, and ejected the installation disk from there.

Hold down the right mouse (not the left) key after you hear the chime at startup. That worked for me!

Just had the same issue where the disc wasn't recognised and couldnt be ejected. Saw on another thread to be aware if you have Parallels or VMWare running the virtual OS could have operation of the disc - and in my case it did so I ejected it from Parallels.

I've tried everything but this, this really work. Thanks 🙂

Big big thank you from me as well. I didn't even know I had a CD in there. Right mouse click worked for me.

J-ho, thanks, that was my issue. Virtual Box had grabbed hold of the CD. I went to Windows on the VM, and ejected the disk and problem solved.