Why won’t Nircmd eject discs?
QThe optical drive on my Windows 10 Pro PC is slot-loading, so no tray slides out. As the Eject button on the keyboard is no longer working I was interested to try the tip in Issue 559’s Make Windows Better, to use Nircmd ( www.snipca.com/32245) to create a shortcut to open the drive. As my drive does not have a tray I thought I’d try changing your instructions from ‘open’ to ‘eject’. So, after the full path for Nircmd I added a space and typed cdrom eject d. Unfortunately, this didn’t work. When I click the icon I created a window opens that suggests I read the Help file. Where am I going wrong? Thanks for a great magazine. Tom Jones
AWhile we understand why you thought you might need a different command, and respect your initiative, by substituting ‘eject’ for ‘open’ you’re actually supplying a command that is meaningless to Nircmd.
The ‘cdrom open d:’ command, as we published, instructs Nircmd to issue the PC with an electronic signal to ‘open’ the optical drive (and specifically in this case, drive D). However, to the PC that signal means open, eject, spit or otherwise regurgitate the disc in the indicated drive – the particular mechanics of the drive are irrelevant to the command. The only command Nircmd understands in this regard is ‘open’, not ‘eject’.
So, all you need to do is follow our original instructions. But one final note: don’t forget to include the colon after the drive letter, meaning your full string will look something like “C:\program Files\ Nircmd\nircmd.exe” cdrom open d: (copy and paste it from www.snipca.com/32990).