How To: Get your external Super Drive working in Lion
Every once in awhile I like to post a tip that will likely help only one other person on the planet. Today is such a time.
As some of you may know, I recently replaced my MacBook Pro’s internal SuperDrive with an SSD drive. I chose the MCE Optibay kit for both its ease of installation, and also because it included an external enclosure for my SuperDrive (basically turning my internal drive into an external USB-powered one), so on those rare occasions where I actually needed to burn or read a DVD, I could.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, the day after upgrading to Lion I needed to rip something in Handbrake. This worked fine in Snow Leopard, so imagine my surprise (really, TRY to imagine it) when I popped in a DVD and got THIS message from the DVD Player App:
What the?!? this worked fine in Snow Leopard!
“There was an initialization error. A valid DVD drive could not be found. [-70012]”
This error sucked for a couple reasons. First, this drive worked just fine in Snow Leopard – I didn’t have to do anything other than plug it in to get it to play a DVD. Second, it’s one of those error messages that really doesn’t give you any info or course of action other than to say “Crap. It looks like a hardware error, and what the hell am I supposed to do with that?” And Third, I knew it WASN’T a hardware error since the DVD Showed up on the desktop and in Finder – it was just that the DVD Player App couldn’t see it.
Well, luckily for me, I have many smart faithful readers, and luckily for YOU, I am going to tell you what I learned. Faithful Macenstein reader Jens pointed me to an article over at hardwrk that fixed my problem, and at the risk of plagiarism (and because their screenshots are in German and I want to get this info out there) here’s a quick run through of the steps to get Lion to recognize your now EXTERNAL, formerly internal, SuperDrive.
Step 1: You’re going to need to slightly modify the DVDPlayback framework on your Mac, and to do that, you need a Hex editor. Download 0xed. You’re basically going to do a “Find and Replace” on that file, changing all instances of the word “Internal” to “External”. But a regular text editor can’t do that.
Step 2: Back up the file /System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/DVDPlayback by Option + dragging a copy to your desktop, or somewhere else on your computer. I then renamed the file by adding the word “ORIG” to the end. You should too. This is just so if you screw things up you can always put the original file back, but you’re not going to screw anything up.
Step 3: Open the file in 0xed. It should look like this:
Step 4: Hit Command + F (Find) or go to EDIT> FIND> FIND, and then type in “Internal” in the top FIND box, and type “External” in the bottom REPLACE box. I left “Ignore case” checked, and then hit REPLACE ALL.
Step 5: You probably won’t be able to save the file over itself, so you’ll need to do a SAVE AS. Save the file to your desktop (good thing you renamed your old version ORIG, right?). Now just drag that file back into the /System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/ folder, overwriting the old file. (You may have to give your admin password to modify the file).
Step 6: That should be it. Try plugging in your external drive and verify that it works. If it still doesn’t, then, sorry. I got no other ideas. But it should.
HOORAY! DVD Player now launches!
You are the freakin’ BOMB! Thank you SO MUCH!
Super! Also seems to work on ML. Thanks!
Thank you, I had the exact same issue and this resolved it.
I have the same exact issue. I was not able to install the hex editor. I have OS X 10.8.1. I tried an other Hex Editor Synalize it, but it did not find any text “internal”.
I have admin right on my Macbook Pro.
Can you suggest how to install 0xed?
I successfully installed 0xed and fixed the problem. Great tip! Thank you!
Worked Perfectly….Thanks!!!!!!
This works on my ML.
Excellent. Exactly I am looking for. Thanks so much!!!
Works like a charm. Good deed to post this: thanks!
DUDE – you are da MAN! Looks like there were more than one of us. Many thanks!
Fantastic! Place hand on back and pat away! Thank You for sharing. Now one more quick question, anyone get their eject key to work? I still have to command-click. Am I missing a step here? Thanks for solving months of frustration in 5 minutes.
Many thanks!
Your a frikkin wizzard. Cheers it worked!!
Thank you External DVD drive now working after latest Mountain Lion up Release 23 September 2012
Thanks very much. Beautifully explained. Works like a treat.
Michael
It works great. But the Eject key does not function any more. Anyone noticed that and got it fixed?
You are the man thanks a lot
Awesome. Solution worked perfectly. Thanks a ton.
THANKS FOR HELP. DVD Player works! BTW, I don’t understand a Apple politic…
Legend! So easy to do- Genius 🙂
Yes! Thank you!
This was a huge help, thank you!
Worked like a charm! Note: the first time, I made the mistake of modifying a similar file with the same name at /System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework
Didn’t work!
Luckily realized I needed to drill down two more directories to get to the right file.
Tweaked it, and… voila!
Many, many thanks. I love the Internet.
Thank you, I’m new to Mac’s but I managed to do follow your instructions and now my new (second-hand) iMac external DVD player works perfectly.
I am surprised though, I thought Macs were meant to need no technical knowledge.
Thanks
Thanks a heap! Solved my problem!
Thanks! Works with 10.8.2.
Thanks! it worked!
Superb – worked exactly as describe. Thank you!
It’s mind-boggling that that works. What is Apple thinking, coding their DVD player software to specifically REQUIRE an internal drive? That’s nuts. The idea that replacing “Internal” with “External” would fix it seems outrageous, but it works!
I was sad when I discovered that my now-external DVD player wouldn’t play DVDs.
Thank you for providing a solution.
Didn’t work for me.
It said “0 items replaced”
Make sure that the Text Encoding in the 0xED application is set to ASCII. Mine was initial set to UTF-16 and the search wouldn’t find the string “Internal”
Thank you Thank you Thank you.!!! U are the MAN!
Thank you very much… Worked like a charm!!! I also replace my optical drive with the HD and installed an SSD. The external optical drive has been a headache for weeks now, but you’re instructions were flawless. VERY HAPPY!!!
Amazing, it’s works! You’re rock! Thank u so much, i’m very happy too…. ^_^
Was dreading putting the superdrive back in, pulling the SSD out to take it back to Apple for service.
Now it seems that would have been even more maddening had I not come upon this tip because the
superdrive surely would have worked just fine back in place in this 5 day old 13″ MBP non retina. One
more vote of thanks for this fix.
Thanks so much! Did the exact same thing you did (replace the dvd drive with an internal drive) and this resolved the issue flawlessly!
Thank you, a million times over!
Worked Like a charm. I can now once again view and burn dvd’s.
Can’t thank you enough!
Thank you!! It worked like a charm on my 2012 MBP 15″ on 10.7.5
Winner for me. Well done.
Worked on my late 2009 iMac, replaced the internal with an SSD so needed an external DVD drive
Thanks!
I can’t believe I got this to work. Noob.
Early 2009 MPB; replaced old dvd drive with SSD.
THANKS.
Worked fine.
Early 2011 macbook pro with Internal DVD replaced by second 750GB HDD and original DVD in external USB enclosure.
Running Mountain Lion 10.8.2 upgraded from Lion.
Thanks !!!
Thank you so much!!! That did the trick!!! You are the best!!!!
thank you!
Love it. Now I have SSD and SATA in my MBP and DVD drive works externally on rare occasions when needed. Brilliant.
Thanks so much, this worked perfectly for me, once I replaced both the file in the ‘A’ folder and also another in the next door “Current ” folder
I feel like an idiot….I cannot find the file: /System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/DVDPlayback
to back it up. Where is this file? I have searched my Mac for it and it does not show up.
So shortly after I posted this morning, I found the system folder and the file. I made the changes and it did work beautifully! Thank you very much!
I have tried this method several times with my macbook pro late 2011 15in and it just doesnt work. I took out my superdrive and put it into an case making external did as instructed and boom nothing
Same here. I’ve been searching for quite some time… finally found this thread, changes made, but not working…
hello people, I was able to change 4 items but iam unable to save the file to my desktop I went in to disk utilities went to the file and I do have read and write capabilities checked please help.
This even worked for Tiger 10.4.11!
Great and funny article! Fixing this on my own saved me some money. Love Macenstein!