Virtualbox broke my DVD drive eject button.

[Lord Uber Dowzen]

Hi,

I was trying to install win98 on virtual box to play some old games. I couldn't get them working and because virtual box seemed to have made the eject button on my main DVD drive not work (will close the drive but not open it) I decided to take it off. An uninstall and restart later the eject button still doesn't work. It's more of an irritation than a major problem as I have another drive and I can still eject it from My computer but I'd still like to fix it. Any help? When I created the win98 Guest OS I selected the checkbox which lets the Guest OS directly access the drive if it's any help.

Thanks for any help.

[TerryE]

There is no way that installing an app like VBox can break a H/W switch such as an eject button. Does the word coincidence have any resonance

[alukin]

Did you get boxed version of VB from SUN and hit your system block by that box? There is no other way to physically break thins.

[Lord Uber Dowzen]

Nah, don't worry about it. Deleting all traces of virtualbox and a couple of restarts fixed it. Thanks for your, uh, solutions though.

[TerryE]

Your reply does confuse me. You seem to imply that removing VBox has cured this. If you were using a Mac H/W then I might understand, but on PCs the eject button is wired to a microswitch inside the DVD which is wired into the DVD H/W + Firmware. This can't be suppressed by a host OS command.

[CaptainFlint]

Your reply does confuse me. You seem to imply that removing VBox has cured this. If you were using a Mac H/W then I might understand, but on PCs the eject button is wired to a microswitch inside the DVD which is wired into the DVD H/W + Firmware. This can't be suppressed by a host OS command.

This is not so. I saw several times that a program (or a driver maybe) blocked the DVD drive eject functionality on an ordinary PC (with Windows OS) with an ordinary DVD drive. I don't know the internals of work with optical drives, but it seems to me that there exists some link between software and hardware. Maybe, it depends on the specific DVD drive, but the fact is that software can block ejecting.

[Sasquatch]

Your reply does confuse me. You seem to imply that removing VBox has cured this. If you were using a Mac H/W then I might understand, but on PCs the eject button is wired to a microswitch inside the DVD which is wired into the DVD H/W + Firmware. This can't be suppressed by a host OS command.

This is not so. I saw several times that a program (or a driver maybe) blocked the DVD drive eject functionality on an ordinary PC (with Windows OS) with an ordinary DVD drive. I don't know the internals of work with optical drives, but it seems to me that there exists some link between software and hardware. Maybe, it depends on the specific DVD drive, but the fact is that software can block ejecting.

Linux does this for example too. If you don't have HAL, or use it, or it fails on something, it can lock the drive until you manually unmount the drive. You can try to press the button as much as you want, but it won't unmount and eject the drive.

[TerryE]

OK, I was wrong. There is a command which will disable the Eject.

However, this is the only post that I've seen where it is claimed that the VBox VMM is activating this. Surely if this was a VBox failure mode then we'd see it a lot more. The only thing that I can think of is that the OP has a VM with the CD/DVD mounted passthrough and the guest OS is doing it. Have you any ideas here Sasquatch?

[Lord Uber Dowzen]

Ah, doesn't really matter now, it's fixed so, yeah.

[Sasquatch]

Have you any ideas here Sasquatch?

Nope, never done this kind of thing actually. I always use ISO files, and the rare occasion that I do use a physical drive with passthrough, I usually shutdown the VM or unmount the drive. I can't recall having the Guest lock the physical drive, but then again, the only times I did use a physical drive was with a Windows Guest and it did eject just fine.

[Entegy]

It happens. He was probably using the drive in the vm and something glitched. A restart usually clears that up. Software (such as burning apps) often lock the drive to prevent damage to the disc.

[plastic]

I get this all the time when using DVD ripping software in my guest OS (which obviously requires passthrough).

Ubuntu host, XP guest.

All those sarcastic initial respondents that seem to think the eject button has no interaction with software obviously don't know much about it. Did you guys never notice that your media player apps (and your optical drive right-click menu) have an eject option?

Really annoying when you can't get your draw open though. I end up looking for a paper clip (because the little hole on the drive does override the software) I wish the optical drive could be connected and disconnected from the host while the guest was running.

In fairness the passthrough instructions are clear that it may cause some funny goings on...