Eject CD Tray Shortcut For Windows XP on a Mac Pro

30 September 2007 16:31:41

In a previous post, I mentioned that I was hoping to find a way to open and close the CD tray on my Mac Pro (running Windows XP under Boot Camp without the Apple Keyboard and its eject key) without having to open My Computer, right-click on the drive icon and select Eject. So far, the answer I found wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but at the highest level, the workaround provides all the funcitonality I was looking for.

“Wizmo is an extremely useful ‘Windows Gizmo’” as the application’s homepage states. Technically speaking, Wizmo is a simple executable that contains many helpful Windows shortcuts run by executing the program with the command you’d like to perform added after the file name as a execution option.

To create a function-key for ejecting the CD Tray, first download Wizmo (wizmo.exe) and put it wherever you’d like as there is no installation to run. I created a folder in My Programs and moved it there.

Next, right-click on your Desktop and go to New > Shortcut. This will start the New Shortcut Wizard. On the first wizard screen, browse to or type the location of wizmo.exe. Click Next to go to the second wizard screen and type a name for your shortcut (I named it Eject CD) and click Finish to complete the wizard.

You should now have a Shortcut on your desktop titled with the name you gave it and a big red circle with a ‘W’ as the icon, but we’re not quite done yet. Right-click on your icon and go to Properties. In the Target field add the text open at the very end of the field, after the quotation marks if there are any. Next click in the Shortcut Key field and on your keyboard, type the function-key combo you’d like to use to open the CD Tray. It should look something like the image on the right.

Note: Finding a function-key combo to use may take some trial-and-error as some function-keys are already assigned to other functions throughout Windows and the applications you have installed. I chose Control+F12 as my combo.

Finally, click OK to apply the settings we just made and close the shortcut Properties window. Now, give your new function key a try! If the combo you chose is available, your CD tray should open. If another task is assigned to your combo, then it won’t work and you’ll have to go back and try another combo in the Properties menu.

You now have a working function-key for your previously inaccessible CD Drive!

There are also a few tricks we can do to clean-up the shortcut we created on the Desktop. First, I changed the icon image to something more meaningful. To do the same, re-open the shortcut Properties and click Change Icon… Then browse to the location of shell32.dll on your computer (it should be C:\WINDOWS\system32\shell32.dll) and click Open. You should see a collection of standard system icons to choose from. I chose one that looks like a CD Drive. Pick whichever icon is meaningful to you and click OK. Click OK again to close the shortcut Properties.

Last, I’m not a big fan of icons cluttering-up my Desktop. I copied the shortcut I created to my Start Menu simply by dragging it and dropping it in the All Programs menu. You can then delete the original shortcut on your desktop.

That’s it! Everything works as desired so I no longer have to walk through a series of steps to open my CD Tray. All I have to do is a quick Control+F12 and it’s open. One could create another shortcut for closing the tray; but for me, it’s just as easy to manually push the tray closed when I’m done.