Hey guys Lately my computer has been suffering from a HUGE Slowdown when I am burning a disc. I have tested this with Nero Burning Rom and SONIC. Before all this I could be burning a disc while I was working in Photoshop, now all I can do is sit and wait until the disc is finished burning. The mouse pointer movement is very, very choppy, and opening a folder would take ages. Everything is fine, the second the disc stars burning, everything slows down terribly at once. Besides all this, I have CDs with MP3s I listen to now and then. I was used to opening the MP3s on Windows Media Player and listen to them without having to copy it to my HDD, now doing this is buggy... If I open an MP3 file directly from the CD, every 2 seconds or so the sound is slightly cutted off (It's somewhat like an Audio CD would be skip on an audio system when the disc is scratched. I've noticed that every time the music "skips" the LED in the DVD/CD-RW drive flashes. I usually could open MP3s directly from a Data CD and listen to them with no problems at all, now I encounter this type of skipping problem. Help would be really appreceated! Thanks a lot! Dan.

It kinda sounds like your optical drive might have some kind of problem, maybe dirt or a failing laser. You could try a cleaning disc. FWIW to XP users: When you click on the 'Command Prompt' you are just causing the 'Command prompt' to be displayed. This prompt gives you access to NTVDM.EXE, the 'NT Virtual DOS Manager'.

The lens is clean and I don't think it's anywhere near failing. I'm 100% sure this is software related problems... Could this be caused by windows xp service pack 3?

"I'm 100% sure this is software related problems" Wow, that's pretty impressive, you're a better troubleshooter than I am. I'm not 100% sure of anything. You could try backing out SP3. FWIW to XP users: When you click on the 'Command Prompt' you are just causing the 'Command prompt' to be displayed. This prompt gives you access to NTVDM.EXE, the 'NT Virtual DOS Manager'.