CD doesn't eject

Question

I have a problem with ejecting a CD. It happened twice in the past few days, CD drive disappears from the list of devices in a Finder and I can't eject a CD that sits inside my laptop. I tried Disk Utility it sees the drive, but the eject option is grayed out. Typing "drutil tray eject" in Terminal also doesn't produce any effect.

Answer 1

The first thing to try in these cases is to restart the computer and hold down your Eject key or Mouse/trackpad button while it's starting up.

If that doesn't work, try Resetting the SMC on an Intel based mac, or a PMU reset on an older PowerPC machine, then try again.

If that fails, you'll want to bring the machine into an  Authorized Service Center if it's under warranty, or look into less orthodox solutions if not.

Answer 2

I had a similar problem with a macbook that wasn't able to start up and I wanted to put in the reformatting disk in to try and fix it but had a stuck CD.

I tried holding the eject, mouse button, holding multiple buttons at the same time, tilting it.. What actually worked was a suggestion I found that using step 3 from here

I just stuck a borders gift card into the slot and then gently 
pushed it down on the rotating CD (scary sound). 
It stopped spinning and soon ejected!