Random ejects on Intel 1.83GHZ MacBook Pro

[macaddict23]

I was watching a DVD movie on this laptop yesterday, and when I turned my laptop and this morning to continued watching, the DVD randomly ejected. It's not scratched, and no it's not pirated. I tried different brands of CDs and DVDs, and my laptop just spits them out. Any clues? Thanks!

 

[Makosuke]

Is there a long hang with the drive making noise before the random eject, or does it just spit it out immediately without warning?

The former case would indicate that it's having trouble reading the disc and spitting it out for that reason. If it's more abrupt, it sounds like something else.

Also, does your MBP occasionally make eject noises when there's no disc in the drive? Mine does that once in a while (rarely--maybe once a month), but I've never had it spit a disc out. Wondering if maybe it WOULD if there was a disc inserted.

 

[macaddict23]

Is there a long hang with the drive making noise before the random eject?

That's it!

 

[Makosuke]

In which case, you've got one of three problems I can think of:

1) The lens in the optical drive is dirty, causing read errors. This actually happened to my first-gen MBP 17" recently. In this case a cleaning disc might fix it (did for me).

2) The disc itself is bad. This would be apparent if other discs work fine, and particularly if that one always has trouble in the same spot or behaves similarly on another computer or set-top player.

3) The optical drive is dying. Can definitely happen, no much to do but replace it. The drives themselves aren't outrageously expensive, but they can be a hassle to install if you're not comfortable digging around in the guts of a laptop.