Force eject CD/DVD stuck in Apple computer

If you’ve got a CD or DVD that simply refuses to eject from your Apple computer, whether it’s an iMac, MacPro or Macbook there’s a simple solution.

To eject a stuck disc:
Press and hold your mouse or trackpad button during bootup

  1. Power down the device completely
  2. Press and hold your mouse button/trackpad button and keep it held down
  3. Press the power button to turn it back on while keeping mouse button down
  4. Keep holding the mouse/trackpad button and eventually the CD or DVD should eject itself and then the computer will continue to boot as normal.

NOTE: I’m not sure if this technique still works with wireless (Bluetooth) pointing devices such as the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad but I will endeavour to test this later and update this post.

Retina Macbook Pro screen going blank/black intermittently/panic

Over the last few days my retina Macbook Pro has been playing up.

It started with a kernel panic (aka Grey Screen of Death GSOD).

retina-macbook-pro-kernel-panic

After which I booted into single user mode and ran fsck -fy to check and repair any permissions, of which there were none. It seemed ok for a day or two, but recently I opened it to wake it from sleep and the screen remained black. They keypad was illuminated but screen completely black, the computer was on though, you could hear volume changes with the volume keys, you could see it on the network and remote screen share into it but the display was kaput and even restarting didn’t kick the screen into life.

There was a quick fix – an SMC reset worked (temporarily):

  • Whilst the computer is off press the left SHIFT+CTRL+OPTION and the Power button together at the same time and then release them. You should notice your charge light on the magsafe adapter briefly change colour.

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Adobe Photoshop CS5 Could not initialize Photoshop because of a program error [FIX]

Launching Photoshop CS5 on Windows XP gives the following  error message after loading splash screen.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Could not initialize Photoshop because of a program error

There are no error codes shown and no errors in windows system or application log.
FIX : To fix hold down CTRL+SHIFT+ALT when you click to launch CS5. This clears preferences and then it all loaded ok.