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I have a Lenovo T420 laptop. The reason I want to disable the CD-ROM is because when moving the laptop, I often unintentionally press the eject button, which turns on CD-ROM's power and pops the tray open - it's annoying for me. I am looking for a way to power off CD-ROM, and only power back on when I re-configure it, preferably done through the BIOS.

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4 Answers 4

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Disabling the effect of the eject button can be controlled at the OS level. Use CDRom-Lock or eject -i on to lock the drive closed.

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  • This program is apparently written in VB6 (a language from an era preceding the Cambrian Epoch) and as such, doesn't run on Windows 7.
    – Aphex
    Mar 29, 2012 at 16:48
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    @Aphex - I have run lots of Visual Basic programs on Windows 7. My guess its more of a problem with your installation.
    – Ramhound
    Jun 21, 2012 at 12:19
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There is no way ti disable the drawer button in the BIOS. Disabling the optical drive in Device Manager will not affect the drawer button.

There is a "door lock" (and corresponding "door unlock") command in the low-level ATA command set. I have no idea if anyone ever implemented a utility to do what you're asking. (There's a possibility that some optical drives will reject the "door lock" command when the drawer is empty.)

Have you considered simply removing the entire optical drive out of its bay? It's two seconds to pop out the drive (slide the tab release, and then pull on the tab), and another second to pop it back in.

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I wrote LockCD application after giving up on finding a properly functioning software that would lock the CD ROM eject button which i hit quite frequently on my Lenovo T520 laptop. The main problem with the software found over the internet was that it wouldn't retain the lock state after Sleep/Resume. I made it freely available at http://sourceforge.net/p/lockcd/wiki/Home/

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  • This doesn't work for my T420. I have the program running and enabled, and drive D is in the Locked Drives list. The cursed blue button on the drive still opens the tray.
    – Aphex
    Mar 29, 2012 at 16:41
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Lock CD works perfectly now on ASUS Win 7 Laptop. It works once the program has kicked in after start up after resuming from Sleep mode or re start so I think that's the best it can be as the program has to kick in to start working. But any difficulties on not working after resume is resolved. Very well done on that. It's a nice product that leaves a window of opportunity for someone to open and close the draw after start up but after that it's doing the job it is designed to do to. One up on CD ROM which 061 drops it's bundle after shutting down or sleep and no longer holds it's function after start up or sleep. So this one wins the day.

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  • maybe it always worked for you, but apparently not on his T420 laptop though.
    – barlop
    Jun 21, 2012 at 11:52
  • True. Seems there is some inconsistency on what it will work on. I loaded both the x64 and x86 installer package ( a bit rad as it runs it twice) and it stays locked after shut down and restart (most of the time). Could use a tweak still but it is still the best available so far that I have tried. Still stays active after sleep and resume on ASUS notebook on Win 7 consistently.
    – TonyP
    Jul 17, 2012 at 4:01

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