Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

The strangest thing: My mac doesnt see ONLY Win7 cd

S

snusmumrik

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 8, 2010
5
0
Hi guys,

Check this out: I bought parallels 5 and Win 7 home edition, in order to put on my mac. Parallels installation was nice and smooth, i created virtual machine and insterted Win 7CD. (official)

And here came the strangest thing: my mac doesnt see it! I ejected the cd, and put in other cd (in this case Starcraft 2), and voila it works, the install image pops up and i see the cd in finder. I put in this Win 7 cd in the other mac...and it works, finder sees it and i can access it.

However when I put it back in mine, it keeps spinning it and seems to think its blank, cause iDVD pops up after 2-3 minutes. Parallels 5 doesnt see it, Finder doesnt see it either. What could be the problem?

P.S. just tried this Win7 cd on G5 (OS 10.4.6): no problem, took it to the shop and tried it on the shop's MBP: no problem. Tried inserting other CD's in my MBP (as mentioned above they were Parallels, Starcraft2, and Snow Leopard): absolutely no problem. But when i insert this Win 7 CD in, my MBP doesnt recongize it. My brains are fried as I cannot think of one single possibility of what might cause this strangest issue.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mac OS X 10.6.4/ Mac Book Pro 2.66 Intel Core DUo/ 4GB
this Mac was bought in October 2009 from official store
 
Some optical drives seem to be more sensitive than others. Also, sometimes dust particles and other debris can enter the drive - particularly on slot-loading ones like on MBs.

I also find that MS seem to use rubbish quality disks for Win7. At work we recently got a batch of about 10 Win7 disks and maybe half or more wouldn't read in our drives. Other disks worked fine.

I would suggest that you get hold of a can of compressed air and try blasting out the drive. Also, put the disk in a machine that reads it OK and make a copy onto a decent quality blank DVD and see if the copy works in your drive. You'll have to use the copy feature in proper burning software to copy the disk, however, as it is a bootable one and just copying the files from one disk to the other will not work.

Hope this helps!
 
There is a tool that Microsoft provide that allows you to pull the data off from the Windows 7 disc and put it on a memory stick for you to boot from and install Windows. I can't remember what it's called. I'll have a quick look for it. They implemented this for those who had netbooks that didn't come with optical drives.
 
Before my MacBook Pro's optical drive died on me, it used to read just a few discs among a hundred. It's pretty weird.

Try buying an optical drive DVD/CD cleaner. It worked for a while.
 
Thanks guys for all your help!

But the first thing i ll do, is i ll go and change Win7 cd (i am still in 10 days return policy:)), just in case the other one will work.

On other hand its hard to believe its optical drive problem: as ALL other cd/dvd work just fine, it seems that "beloved" Microsoft buys the cheapest cd possible that dont work on lots of machines
 
I wouldn't have thought Microsoft would cheap out on discs, especially for one of two products that bring in large amounts of revenue for them. Perhaps they just happened to have got a duff patch of blanks from a company that provide them with the discs.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

I believe it may have more to do with the hologram on the other side. Note that the USB key approach is unlikely to work for Boot Camp but would be fine for a VM install.

B
 
Well I have contacted Apple support and following their guidance executed diagnostics, and restarted PRam and NVRam. The support guy concluded that it cannot be the optical drive as ALL other cd/dvd work, thus it should be the Win7 cd. (i guess by the rule of exclusion)

I have contacted Microsoft, and their reply was that "Windows is not designed to perform on other platforms than PC, thus you can return the product and get the refund". When asked if it can be the quality of the disc itself the reply was the same:confused:. (surprise, surprise)

I d love to just copy the win7 cd, but i dont have a 2-drive system. Instead i ll just start going around shops trying discs. I ll return this one, take the money to the other shop, and buy another bundle, then will see how it goes.

P.S. The funny thing is that whatever i do, my optical (and i guess not the system) simply doesnt see that there is data on the cd, and thinks its blank, hence the behaviour, it makes noises like a siren.
 
snusmumrik said:
I d love to just copy the win7 cd, but i dont have a 2-drive system.
Click to expand...

Why? You're trying to install into a VM aren't you? So you don't actually need a disc, only an ISO image of the disc.

Download one of the official ISOs (or make your own on the Mac that does read the disc, if you need help download Burn ) and just use the product key you were given.

(You can always copy an optical disc in two steps, original disc->ISO, ISO -> copy disc).

B
 
balamw said:
Why? You're trying to install into a VM aren't you? So you don't actually need a disc, only an ISO image of the disc.

Download one of the official ISOs (or make your own on the Mac that does read the disc, if you need help download Burn ) and just use the product key you were given.

(You can always copy an optical disc in two steps, original disc->ISO, ISO -> copy disc).

B
Click to expand...

OMG! MAN,U R FRIGGING GENIUS.....:cool: I will download the friggin ISO, i didnt know of such option. wow no words:eek:

P.s. seriously mods you should create tab: "this post is helpful, this guy is genius" :D
 
balamw said:
Why? You're trying to install into a VM aren't you? So you don't actually need a disc, only an ISO image of the disc.

Download one of the official ISOs (or make your own on the Mac that does read the disc, if you need help download Burn ) and just use the product key you were given.

(You can always copy an optical disc in two steps, original disc->ISO, ISO -> copy disc).

B
Click to expand...

Followed your advice, and link, everything works! Thanks a lot!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back