MacBook Pro SuperDrive won't read any dvd - ejects.

Anar here...

Actually with a good news :) at least for me.

The Problem.

This story started about a year ago. My MacBook Pro 15", late 2008 model, started to complain when writing DVDs. So, he refused some of medias :( I didn't actually pay any attention to it, since I am not burning much. I just tried to use good Verbatim disks, that all.

Some months later, my laptop started to refuse to read some DVD. That was a kind of disturbing... I looked in internet and found a verrrrryyyy long thread on Apple Discussion forum with the similar issue, and all kinds of suggestions how to fix.

I, personally, think, that there you find just similar symptoms, which actually come from different problems/errors. This is why I was very careful, when reading the thread...

Anyway I tried couple of solutions from that thread - none worked for me. Problem persisted.

Well, since I didn't have time (a lot of work) to send my laptop to Apple store to fixe the issue, I decided to give up and just ignore it. Some discs can't be read... not a big deal :)

Now my laptop is 1.6 year old and last Friday I needed to check some important backups (on DVD-R) and.... my mac just refused to read any of the disks!

So, I tried to check some of other DVDs... He just refused to read ANY of them. It spins a disk for a moment and ejects it...

What the FUCK, I thought!!!

The Solution.

NOW, the solution, which actually worked for me.

I could't believe that SuperDrive just got broken. I mean, common... ;)

So after some investigation and googling around, trying all possible solutions I came up to a conclusion, that it is most probably the dust on the lens, which "damaged" my SuperDrive. I mean, that was the only "bug", which can be fixed without sending the laptop to warranty. :)

Now, since that was the weekend and I could'n get a CD cleaner from anywhere... I decided to use some simple "solution". :)

I used a business card and a cleaning cloth, which comes with the mac or iPhone. I switched off the laptop. I wrapped the cloth around the business card and while holding the ends of the the cloth I very gently dived it for a couple of centimeters in the optical drive, pushed and pulled a bit. I cleaned on the left side of SuperDrive, since the lens should be at the left hand side.

This dirty and free trick actually worked. It took me a minute of "cleaning", after that my Mac reads everything I pop in ;) What a miracle :)

Now, I think, my problem is solved. At least I didn't fined any DVD which I can't read now. I also tried to write couple of DVDs. Worked perfectly.

I mean, I know, that I need to get my superDrive cleaned properly and I will do that some time later, but as a short term fix that was a quick solution, I guess :)

Update: I came across a post, which explains with pictures and step-by-step instruction how to properly clean SuperDrive.