DJPoLo Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 The superdrive in my Powerbook is acting up. It won't accept any media. I put in a disk (CD or DVD, blank or burned) and it spins up sounds like it's reading it, then spits it out. Any ideas? If I can't get it figured out today, I'll back it up and call Apple since I'm afraid it's a hardware issue. -Chet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XRe Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 How old is it? How many miles? Changed the oil recently?? Uh... Do you have the Apple Care plan?? I've been told by several friends that have Powerbooks that the Apple Care plan is invaluable - while the laptops generally run well (and OS-X rules), they've each had some sort of hardware problem that they had to have corrected under Apple Care within 2 years (that's a total of 3 Powerbooks, BTW...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 Have you done the obvious (restarted and tried again)? George tells me that that's step one. From there, I dunno. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GuildSF4 Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 Not reading at all? or only burned disks? (this would normally be an alignment issue) The first type is generally a hardware issue, a reboot may work temporarily. (Causes are normally the drive, then power supply in order of probability, then overheating be a cause also, try turning the powerbook off for a while and turning it back on. See if it reads then.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pisgahrifle Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 At first ours didn't want to burn a disk, then it cranked right up. Satan en ex machina, I guess. I need to ask my wife if we've got Apple Care on this temperamental bastard. Having done her grad and undergrad work in media and communications, she's reasonably handy with Mac. Whenever anything's gone a little screwy with it that she can't handle though, my CS friend's eyes glaze over as they say, "Mac? Huh? I dunno." I really like this little thing, and it's the first new computer I've ever had, but sometimes I just want to ventilate the hell out of it. If all else fails, do what I do- wait till you're wife's about to come home, than as she comes in the door cuss at it like a sailor and threaten it with something big, heavy and sharp. She'll usually make a concerted effort to find what's wrong. Your results may vary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BritinUSA Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 Did you try this... This problem has happened to a few people including myself and the cure is very simple. Just relaunch finder through the force quit menu and all will/should be returned to normal. I found it here... http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@...SY7.1@.68b1e634 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 Did you try this...This problem has happened to a few people including myself and the cure is very simple. Just relaunch finder through the force quit menu and all will/should be returned to normal. I found it here... http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@...SY7.1@.68b1e634 <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hehehe... the same effect can be had with a restart. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJPoLo Posted June 22, 2005 Author Share Posted June 22, 2005 The laptop is 18 months old. It is still under an Apple Care Agreement. Running OS X 10.3.9. I have restarted (reset PMU) but to no avail. It ejects whatever I stick in it. It won't read any disk and also won't accept blank media. I'm pretty sure this is a hardware failure on the SuperDrive, but I just thought I'd get some input from y'all before calling Apple. -Chet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GuildSF4 Posted June 23, 2005 Share Posted June 23, 2005 Definitely sounds like a dead Superdrive... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJPoLo Posted June 27, 2005 Author Share Posted June 27, 2005 Definitely sounds like a dead Superdrive... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It was. I took it to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store here in Austin and they diagnosed it as a "hardware issue". With any luck I'll have it back by Friday. -Chet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJPoLo Posted June 29, 2005 Author Share Posted June 29, 2005 Update: Dropped the Powerbook off at the Apple Store at 14:00 on Monday. It arrived back at work via DHL at 10:00 today. 44 hours later! All is well. -Chet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GuildSF4 Posted June 29, 2005 Share Posted June 29, 2005 Cool, glad they got it fixed for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 Besides the re-start as the first resort for any OSX machine with any problem whatsoever, another good thing to keep up your sleeve for just such an occasion is a clean user account. Create a new user in System Prefs/Accounts Pane. Make that user an Administrator and write the password down somewhere. When all else fails, try logging in as this user and seeing if the problem is still there. This determines if a corrupted pref, or dependency in your home Library folder is gumming up the works. If at all possible, make a clone of your machine to an external FW drive at some point, then if all the above fails, boot to the clone and see if that fixes it. If so, just do an Archive install of OSX and Bam! you will be back in business before you know it. OSX is really resilient if you don't screw the pooch by doing bad things to it like using 3rd party disk utilities on the startup volume, or doing Apple updates, or package based software installs without repairing permissions first. I troubleshoot Macs for a living on top of my other jobs and agree that the optical drives are the weakest links in their portables. I won't even go into what it took to get a working optical drive in my original Titanium PowerBook. The older Pismo's with the changeable drive modules were a PITA too. The iBooks (clamshell and snow) seldom have optical drive issues IME, but the snow iBooks do have a serious HD longevity issue. They use a cheesier drive than in the PowerBooks and most only came with 128 to 256 MB of RAM so the hard drive spends a lot of time handling SWAP files and dies an early death due to the increased workload. Putting 768MB, or more RAM in them from the start nips this in the bud. My wifes snow iBook spit two HD's within 18 months and two other clients have had HD deaths within 12 months after heavily using iBooks with only 128MB of RAM. All of them now have new HD's (courtesy of Apple warranties) and 768MB of RAM and over a year later, they are still running strong. -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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