Alienware eject button not working

Ridgerunner · 09 Jun 2018

I was on an old thread where folks were describing the eject button not working on Alienware machines. I had the same problem. The eject buttons on both my Alienware laptop and desktop quit working around the same time and nothing I tried fixed it. I just looked at the old thread again where someone suggested installing a missing ODD driver. I tried that and it fixed it immediately on the desktop after a year of it not working. I can only imagine this was caused by some Windows update. Whatever it was downloading the driver and installing it fixed the issue. Now I have to try it on the laptop. When I tried to post this information on the old thread I got into an aggravating circular thing of not being able to log in, trying to change my password, which it just wouldn't let me do. What a mess. Now I have no clue what my password is on that Microsoft help forum, whatever it was.

fireberd · 10 Jun 2018

I don't know why the ODD driver worked. In modern OS' including Win 7 the only driver for optical (disc) drives is the built in Microsoft/Windows drivers. I do support on the Dell forums and have not seen this problem for a long time (last time was an Alienware built before Dell acquired the company so it was an old drive with a hardware problem).

I had a problem with a USB connected disc drive about a month ago. Manually ejecting it with a paper clip in the manual eject hole in the front of the drive fixed it. It now ejects with the eject button again. It had nothing to do with any Windows driver. The manual eject procedure is what we have used on the Dell forum since I started in 2002.