Macbook DVDs not mounting and ejecting problems - fixed ! - NOT !!! - But have a workaround now !

Update 7 Sep 2007 : OK, so the fact is the problem was not with MacTheRipper at all which you’d get from my below post, so I heartily apologize for casting doubt on the makers of an excellent piece of freeware that has ripped many a rental for me. This seems to be what happens : Whenever you burn a CD or DVD it does something to the drive which then makes it not want to mount DVDs so you can watch movies. Resetting the PRAM (ie. Command-Option-P-R on boot does not help, atleast in my case as others have suggested. But this is how I got to watch movies again. Make sure you have something which erases all your parameter files when you drag an application to the trash. I personally think AppTrap is great. Dump something like MacTheRipper in the trash and remvoe files (ie. do not leave them) when it asks you. Now, re-install the software again from a dmg or by downloading. Now set it to be the application that opens DVDs when they are inserted in the Systems Preferences | CDs and DVDs preference panel. Insert the DVD that wouldn’t ount before and the application should open and the DVD mount. YMMV, but this definitely worked for me.

I was a little distraught when I got my new macbook and started having problems almost immediately with the optical drive on it. Something I had actually bought it for as the optical drive on my powerbook G4 12″ had gone.

It was maddening and there were plenty of other people in forums with the problems but mine was kind of intermittent. Occasionally, some things would work but other wouldn’t.

Anyhow, i finally seemed to have discovered the pattern. This worked for me, so I’m posting it for other people to find. YMMV…

The problem seems to be that, if like me, you rip most of your DVDs as soon as you get them so you can watch them later on your computer before deleting them, you used the excellent MacTheRipper to get them onto your hard drive. I would do this, play something with VLC and then the next time I needed to mount a new DVD it wouldn’t even show up on my desktop. The drive would spin up three times and then unceremoniously eject the disk.

What I think was happening was that the rosetta emulation necessary for the app to work on Intel and make it think it’s a PPC chip is doing something.

I installed the new version of Handbrake (which not only rips, but encodes and compresses the DVD file as well - it rocks), and set it as the application to trigger when a DVD is inserted.

So far, problem solved, so if you stumble upon this entry, let me know if it works for you.