Lee Dunkelberg

Q: El Capitan killed DVD drive

After updating to El Capitan on my mid 2010 iMac | 3.08 GHz Intel Core i3 | 16 GB memory 1067MHzDDR3, the computer: 

  1. has lost its built-in DVD drive.
  2. does not recognize the drive. Finder cannot "see" it
  3. Insert disc (which, yes, works find in other DVD drives) and it spins it around back and forth for awhile and then spits it out

This seems to be a fairly widespread problem.

iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2010), iOS 9.0.2, just updated (darn it)

Posted on Oct 6, 2015 12:38 PM

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Q: El Capitan killed DVD drive

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  • by MGrebe,

    MGrebe MGrebe Dec 31, 2015 2:23 PM in response to Lee Dunkelberg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 31, 2015 2:23 PM in response to Lee Dunkelberg

    All,

      I've been having a issue which may be related to what some of you are experiencing.  I have 6 different Mac's, and just realized that since updating to El Capitan, I am unable to see Audio CD's on any of the Mac's (The Finder does not show it mounted, and iTunes cannot access it).  I have been working with Apple Support, and we believe it is a conflict with some 3rd part driver or program I have installed, but I have not been able to narrow it down.  Apple has suggested a clean install, however, I haven't had time to try that on any of the machines yet.

      What I have done is booted in Recovery mode, and the Audio CD is mounted, I can see it from the terminal if I "ls /Volumes".  This does tend to confirm it may be a conflict with a driver or app I have installed. 

      I have found a workaround.  If I disable System Integrity Protection (you need to do this from Recovery mode, and I would recommend Googling how to do it, as you should understand what you are turning on/off when you do it), my Audio CD's mount in normal boot mode, and are visible in iTunes.  As I only rip CD's every couple of months, this workaround works for me.  You could leave SIP off, but I would recommend reading to understand what that means, and what other consequences it might have.

      If I get time to find out what the program or driver that is causing the conflict is, I will post that here as well.

  • by Tracy Reynolds,

    Tracy Reynolds Tracy Reynolds Jan 1, 2016 5:04 PM in response to MGrebe
    Level 3 (594 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 1, 2016 5:04 PM in response to MGrebe

    Whatever 3rd party driver or program has been installed, everyone experiencing this problem has installed it. That sounds very unlikely.

  • by pokey b,

    pokey b pokey b Jan 2, 2016 8:32 AM in response to Tracy Reynolds
    Level 3 (644 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 2, 2016 8:32 AM in response to Tracy Reynolds

    This is very strange. I mean all the reports of problems. DVDs and audio CDs run fine on my system (a mid-2010 21.5 inch i-Mac running OS X 10.11.2). The audio CDs fire up i-Tunes.

  • by Ian_Digman,

    Ian_Digman Ian_Digman Jan 8, 2016 11:09 AM in response to pokey b
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jan 8, 2016 11:09 AM in response to pokey b

    I don't use my DVD drive often so I am late to the party but.... another non-functioning internal DVD drive here.

     

    El Capitan 10.11.2

    iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010)

     

    Tried the SMC/PRAM resets and the lens cleaner trick, both to no avail....  anything else to try?

  • by Ian_Digman,

    Ian_Digman Ian_Digman Jan 10, 2016 4:33 AM in response to Ian_Digman
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jan 10, 2016 4:33 AM in response to Ian_Digman

    Further to my above comment - I have worked out that this is DVD related only... therefore cannot be a hardware issue.

  • by Jim Wainscott,

    Jim Wainscott Jim Wainscott Jan 12, 2016 12:45 PM in response to Lee Dunkelberg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 12, 2016 12:45 PM in response to Lee Dunkelberg

    After updating to El Capitan 11.0 - Loss of use of both DVD and Blu-Ray Drive

    After updating to El Capitan 11.2 - Initially had use of both drives but then after clicking on the DVD icon in System Preferences no drives would eject  their trays. Rebooted and now can only open and close the DVD drive.

     

    Other issues with El Capitan 11.2

    No Audio from Safari or DVD Player application though I do get audio from Logic Pro X

    CalDigit USB/esata card no longer works - there should be a generic USB-3 driver for all USB-3 cards.

     

    With Mavericks and Yosemite neither the DVD or Blu-Ray Drives would function.

     

    Every device works fine in Snow Leopard.

     

    Solution: Make all updates of Apple Software since the days of Snow Leopard run on Snow Leopard and allow all customers to download Snow Leopard.

     

      I have Snow Leopard 10.6.8, Mavericks, Yosemite, and El Capitan on my Mid Summer 2010 Mac Pro.

  • by SallyBunBun,

    SallyBunBun SallyBunBun Jan 13, 2016 7:50 AM in response to Lee Dunkelberg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2016 7:50 AM in response to Lee Dunkelberg

    I'm having the same problem - Photoshop stopped working on me yesterday (Cs5).  I have El Capitan.

    I tried to reinstall it from external DVD drive (which has always worked in the past). It goes to initialising and then nothing.

    Tried disc on mum's mac (she's got Yosemite) and both the DVD and the DVD player work fine.

     

    HELP please - I rely on photoshop for my work.  I have downloaded the CC trial, but I feel cheated that I should have to pay out a monthly subscription when I have the whole Design Suite Premium on disc - and it was expensive to buy and it did work perfectly well!

     

    I agree that Apple may be blocking 3rd party DVD's.  But there must be a way around this.

     

    And whoever said "Time for a new computer", well I don't have £2000  for that :-) PLUS, it WAS working absolutely swimmingly before hand!!

  • by SallyBunBun,

    SallyBunBun SallyBunBun Jan 13, 2016 8:02 AM in response to SallyBunBun
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2016 8:02 AM in response to SallyBunBun

    I am partitioning my hard drive and installing Yosemite to see if it works... will let you know :-)

  • by Jim Wainscott,

    Jim Wainscott Jim Wainscott Jan 13, 2016 8:47 AM in response to SallyBunBun
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2016 8:47 AM in response to SallyBunBun

    Hi Sally,

    I had the same problem installing Photoshop CS5 on El Capitan from the Production Premium Install Disk.

      Using Snow Leopard I solved the install problem by first copying the whole disk to a non system drive. Then I restarted the computer to run El Capitan. Then I installed Photoshop CS5
    from the non system drive itself to the system drive running El Capitan. I haven't tried running the CS5 program to any extent on El Capitan (due to lack of trust) but it does launch and I have been able to draw a little.

    Best to partition your system disk and install a different operating system on each partition, then choose which operating system you want to run by continuously holding down the Alt-Option key when you do a hard boot after power down. A menu will appear allowing you to select which OS you want to launch.

    On my Mac Pro I have my earlier OS's on a regular spinning drive and El Capitan on a newly purchased an SSD from Samsung mounted on an adapter I purchased from Other World Computing (Macsales.com).

    Hope this helps.

  • by aerodyne,

    aerodyne aerodyne Jan 13, 2016 11:36 AM in response to Jim Wainscott
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2016 11:36 AM in response to Jim Wainscott

    After upgrading to El Capitan from Yosemite on an early 2011 15" Macbook Pro, audio CD's and data CD's are no longer readable by the internal optical drive (Superdrive).


    When an audio or data disk is inserted, the system responds with the following alert:  "THE DISK YOU INSERTED WAS NOT READABLE BY THIS COMPUTER" followed by an IGNORE and EJECT button.  After clicking either button, the alert goes away but nothing happens.  In order to eject the disk, I have to use the terminal command "drutil eject". 


    I know the optical drive is not defective because it works fine in a Parallels Windows 10  virtual machine as well as Windows 7 in Bootcamp.  I've tried resetting the SMC, PRAM, permissions, and applied the <string>mbasd=1</string> technique but nothing has changed. 


    It's beyond frustrating that the only way to play a CD using iTunes on my Macbook is by using Windows!!

  • by ZiggyStardustandtheSpiders,

    ZiggyStardustandtheSpiders ZiggyStardustandtheSpiders Jan 13, 2016 12:20 PM in response to Lee Dunkelberg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2016 12:20 PM in response to Lee Dunkelberg

    I have spent countless hours with Apple "Support" over this problem.  Initially I upgraded my 2011 MAcBook Pro to OS X Yosemite and encountered the problem.  I had never had trouble playing DVDs before the update.  Whenever I pressed DVD player it asked me the region of the DVD.  I put in Region 1, as soon as I did that the DVD player disappeared.

    I deleted the faulty DVD player app and tried to download a new one from the App store.  The dvd player app that is downloadable would not work with this operating system and computer.  I couldn't install it.   I phoned apple support and they told me to upgrade to OS X El Capitan.  This process (not including all the time I spent on the line with them)  took three hours.  Once the operating system was upgraded... guess what, same problem, it asks for the region again and then when you put in the region the DVD Player disappears.  All I want the computer to do is what it originally did in 2011.  I don't need all the bells and whistles.  Apple support has been next to useless, promising to call me back, and not calling back, giving me email addresses to contact, which I then did, and then no one returning my email. 

    On Apple chat, after all this they told me to go to a "genius" at the Apple Store.  This kind of performance and crappy service is so frustrating and unproffesional.   I tried downloading SPlayer and Player X, two third party developer apps that claim to be able to play DVDs but none of them worked after I spent $25 on them!   I was eventually forced to buy a portable DVD player.  Why can't an expensive computer like this do something an ultra cheap ASUS or some other PC knockoff can do?   I am never buying another Apple computer again after this. 

  • by TimK,

    TimK TimK Jan 17, 2016 6:43 AM in response to Lee Dunkelberg
    Level 2 (240 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 17, 2016 6:43 AM in response to Lee Dunkelberg

    Same Problem here. Upgraded to El Capitan, latest build, and the Superdrive in my 2010 mac mini stopped working. Just won't accept any discs. Tried everything suggested on this forum. Nothing has worked.

  • by BunBunSally,

    BunBunSally BunBunSally Jan 17, 2016 8:31 AM in response to TimK
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 17, 2016 8:31 AM in response to TimK

    I've gone back to Yosemite and everything is working fine again now :-)  Did you back up with time machine while you had Yosemite?  I took mine back to a year and a half ago.   If you don't have a back up then if you did download Yosemite, then you will still have it in your 'purchases' in your app store.

     

    Good Luck!

  • by aerodyne,

    aerodyne aerodyne Jan 17, 2016 11:19 AM in response to BunBunSally
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 17, 2016 11:19 AM in response to BunBunSally

    Last night I partitioned my drive and clean installed El Capitan in the new partition.  My internal superdrive works perfectly in the clean El Cap partition.  I'll reinstall my apps and move data to the clean install and hopefully all will be well.  I suspect that either the upgrade process and/or a buggy app caused the superdrive breakdown in the updated version of El Capitan.

  • by L. Friedman,

    L. Friedman L. Friedman Jan 17, 2016 11:30 AM in response to aerodyne
    Level 1 (16 points)
    iPhone
    Jan 17, 2016 11:30 AM in response to aerodyne

    I thought this was a good idea. I already have a partition, but it already has El Capitan on it.  I downloaded Yosemite, but I get a message that  the application is too old to be opened on this version of OSX.

     

    I do not have a  Time Machine Backup .  How can I go about making the partition revert to Yosemite?

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