Mac Pro opens DVD drive on boot?

[Richard Flynn]

This is a strange one. I found after getting back from Australia last week that whenever I boot my Mac Pro it opens the DVD drive before continuing to boot. This is the chain of events:

1. Press power button on front of tower
2. The chime sounds from the internal speaker; a solid grey screen appears
3. The DVD drive opens (and stays open)
4. The darker-grey Apple logo appears at the centre of the screen
5. The system continues to boot to the log-in screen.

Anyone got any ideas about what this is or how to fix it? When I originally tried to update the EFI firmware I found that the DVD drive would open and the firmware wouldn't update; that was fixed when a new version (i.e. third version after the release of the Mac Pro) of the EFI firmware came out my machine updated just fine.

I tried resetting the SMC controller using the button on the Logic Board, but this seems to have had no effect. Earlier today I ran a software update and found the new version of the SMC firmware waiting for me; I downloaded and updated that, and the DVD drive opened in exactly the same way before the progress bar appeared to update the SMC firmware.

Pretty odd!

 

[Richard Flynn]

No suggestions from anyone? I'm a little worried that this might be a symptom of a more serious problem.

 

[yg17]

Macs will eject the CD if the mouse button is held down during startup. Perhaps try disconnecting your mouse and see if it still does it, if it doesn't, then your mouse may be screwy

 

[product26]

my bosses G4 does this while hooked up to a KVM switch and PC keyboard & Mouse

 

[Richard Flynn]

D'oh, thanks guys. I'd forgotten that I had another mouse plugged in, and this was sitting in such a position that the button was being jammed down. Moved the mouse, fixed the problem…