I purchased a Samsung SW-248b cd writer yesterday and installed it. Whenever i put a disc in the drive (any type) i can hear the drive spin up the disc and my computer slows down almost to a halt. As soon as i remove the disc from the drive the computer runs fine. I have already tried the following: Reinstalled the driver Switched IDE's Changed from Master to C/S Changed IDE Cables Changed Power Supplies (thought maybe it wasnt getting enough power) Could this be a software issue?

Are they the latest XP specific drivers from your manufacturer's website? Have you checked that your drive is compatible with XP on Microsofts site?

More likely thats the way it's 'sposed to be. Newer CDRWs have a "cache" -- volatile memory chip that needs to be filled up with data before it can proceed. As these caches get larger abd larger, takes longer for a CDRom drive to get ready. Also, as drives get faster and faster, drives need to "spin up" to top speed before going to work (otherwise they'd damage the disk). Put these two together and it takes a little time. Ironically, this means newer, faster drives take longer to be "ready" than older, slower drives, but once ready operate faster.

Lol, i dunno, but im betting he's left his disk in the drive for 5 seconds, which is all it takes the newest drives to "ready". Deffo a problem of some sort.