Ejecting a Slot Load CD

I found myself in a rather ironic predicament. I was trying to be proactive and burning a Windows recovery CD. I put a blank CD in the drive and while Windows was creating the recovery CD... it crashed.

After this, I was not able to remove the CD from the laptop. The eject button did not do anything. The eject option on the drive in Windows Explorer did not do anything. And there was no mechanical button to forcibly eject the CD like there is for some tray-based CD devices.

I was able to eject the CD by doing the following:
1. Shut down the computer
2. Start the computer
3. Press F2 to go to the BIOS setup screens
4. Now press the eject button on the laptop while on the BIOS configuration screen

The CD ejected and I exited the BIOS configuration to complete the standard startup sequence.