I have a Ruby iMac that I want to give my grandchildren and purchased a couple learning software programs for them. Two of the programs show requirements for a 4X CD-Rom and the other a DVD-Rom. The DVD program loads and plays but the two programs that are CDs won't load. I thought DVD drive for the Ruby iMac would be backward compatible and that I could load a CD in the DVD drive. I was able to play music CDs but the program CDs simply won't load and play..nothing happens..
I have the same problem!
I have a Ruby iMac on a display table. It's just so damn pretty!
Optical drives use separate heads to read DVDs and CDs. If your CD read head is broken, it will read DVDs fine, but not CDs. This is not an uncommon occurrence, and sounds consistent with your symptoms.
Replacement drives for this age machine are dirt cheap (if not free), and any respectable Mac tech should be able to swap it out for you in about half an hour. If you were in Arizona, I'd do it for you myself.
You are correct. You SHOULD be able to do BOTH. When drives fail you will get that problem.. either it will play cd but not read DVD's or vice versa. You CD drive may have failed. Before I say it TRULY HAS FAILED.. Have you tried other DATA cd's? if others play then its those disks.. if none works.. then it is the CD drive. You can always get a external USB or Firewire cd/dvd drive.
You have a very old imac and the disk drive is too slow for current day cd-roms. you cannot use cd-roms from about the last few years because they require a cd drive that spins faster than your drive can provide
The optical drive's CD and DVD capabilities use two different lasers, and the CD one may have died or become too dirty to read CD's. Try a CD/DVD drive laser cleaner disk. If that doesn't help, you'll likely have to replace the drive, which may cost between $50-100. -Richard
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Clarification Response: The CDs work when played on my PC with Win XP and also on my older Ruby iMac. The CDs contain with pictures/photos, and word processing files using Open Office which I have installed on the MacBook. It's a mystery! I'm afraid to load CDs on this MacBook now. It is an awful feeling when the CD icon disappears on the desktop and none of the usual eject methods work that I've tried. This laptop has no manual way that I can see to trigger the DVD optical scanner to open like there is on the iMac. On it I can use a paper clip and trigger it to open. It seems it's just luck that the MacBook finally coughs up the disk after several trys to eject including forced shutdowns of the computer. I do have Windows XP installed on a separate partition in case I need to run a Windows app that has no Mac counterpart, but I don't think that's the problem. I've not yet had to use that partition and hope I don't need to if I can find a Mac genealogy program I like to replace what I've always used on the PC.
Clarification Response: The CDs work when played on my PC with Win XP
and also on my older Ruby iMac. The CDs contain with pictures/photos,
and word processing files using Open Office which I have installed on
the MacBook. It's a mystery! I'm afraid to load CDs on this MacBook
now. It is an awful feeling when the CD icon disappears on the desktop
and none of the usual eject methods work that I've tried. This laptop
has no manual way that I can see to trigger the DVD optical scanner to
open like there is on the iMac. On it I can use a paper clip and
trigger it to open. It seems it's just luck that the MacBook finally
coughs up the disk after several trys to eject including forced
shutdowns of the computer. I do have Windows XP installed on a separate
partition in case I need to run a Windows app that has no Mac
counterpart, but I don't think that's the problem. I've not yet had to
use that partition and hope I don't need to if I can find a Mac
genealogy program I like to replace what I've always used on the PC.
do the programs on the CDs load alright on other computers?
(it sounds to me more like an issue with the CDs than with the Mac.)
also, are the programs on the CDs Mac programs, or are they Windows programs? you can't run software written for Windows on a Mac without a third-party utility like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop.
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