This procedure is useful for anyone with mechanical problems with their DVD drive, wont open, wont close, makes clicking/grinding noises etc.
Begin by opening your console to gain access to the drive.
Open the DVD drive to gain access to the tray
Then follow these steps
Looking at the bottom of the drive with begin by sliding the white actuator to the left.
When it is to the right the laser assembly is up, ready to spin up a disc
When the actuator is to the left toward the circuit board the laser assembly is down and the hub that the DVD/CD's would reside on is below the tray
When it is below the tray as pictured below, slide the tray all the way out, there are two tabs circled in green that will stop the tray from coming all the way out, depress these and completely remove the tray.
If your tray slides in and out freely the large black gear circled in green on the left is probably out of place and may be bouncing around in side the drive somewhere but you should have already found it by now!
Another common point of failure is the little nub on the white actuator circled in green on the right, that little baby needs to fit into the trough on the bottom of the tray outlined in green in the next photo.
Also note the teeth on the far left of the actuator, it looks like there are some missing right? Nope, that's normal.
Now with the tray completely out move the actuator so the laser assembly is all the way at the bottom of its travel, line up the tray so the nub fits back in the tray and simply push the tray back in the rest of the way. Reassemble the drive and test!
With drives that will not open, this is often caused by the white nub jumping the track. In that case you may have to force the tray past the nub so you can get to the point where you can re-align the drive. There is no really good way to do this and be careful because you can break the nub off the white thingy and then you will have to replace that part, try to use the flexibility of the tray to bend that away from the white actuator.
