Hello lovely people 🙂

Here is another installment of out computer repairs blog.

How to eject a CD or DVD drive. There are a few ways this can be accomplished but the best way is to use the utility from Nirsoft called NirCmd. This little programme does a lot more than just eject the CD-rom drive, so be sure to take a look at all its capabilities.

Firstly, we need to right-click on the desktop or elsewhere and choose New Shortcut.

In the location box, put the full path to the nircmd.exe file that you downloaded, and append the “cdrom open” command to the end of it, adjusting the drive letter to match your disc drive:

“C:pathtonircmd.exe” cdrom open D:

Note the location of the quotes. If you are using a path with spaces in it, you need to make sure the quotes are only around the path to the executable, and the arguments should be placed after the quote.

Next you need to give the new shortcut a name such as *Eject CD* – something like that, and you’ll have a nice new icon on your desktop.

You can now move the icon to anywhere you’d like and double-clicking on it will immediately eject the drive.

How to create a Shortcut to Close the CD/DVD Drive

You can follow the same exact instructions as above, but instead of “cdrom open” just substitute “cdrom close”.

How to assign a Hotkey to the Shortcut

Now that we have the shortcut, we can easily assign a hotkey to the shortcut by right-clicking on the icon and choosing *Properties*. On the Shortcut tab you’ll see a place to assign the Shortcut key:

Add in the shortcut key and close the dialog. You shouldn’t need to restart anything for the hotkey to work as long as the shortcut is on your desktop. You can also move the shortcut to another folder, for instance to your quick launch bar.

Tip: If you add the shortcut to the Windows Vista quick launch bar, you can use the built-in hotkeys instead of bothering to assign one manually.

How to assign an Icon to the Shortcut

In the *Properties* window click on the Change Icon button, you can give your shortcut a more meaningful icon, perhaps the DVD one you see below.