First problem, which I am guessing has more to do with media player ver. 10 and 11/H653A combination, is that I could burn CDs but when I tried to play them, all I got were "unreadable" errors. 2 different CDs, so I took one, erased it, burned the exact same playlist, using media player 10, on my homebuild and magically it was readable again. Also, I used Creative GO! burn tool that came with the X-Fi and it was readable. Weird problem eh.

 

Second is the lengthy recognition time it takes for certain CD/DVD media. And it's not always consistent. Chris Sawyers Locomotion took 26sec for the drive to actually recognize it, then another half-minute for it to free it up for ejection. The next time, it took roughly 10sec to recognize and an additional 20sec to stop spinning. The only thing that changed on my system was that I re-installed the original drivers instead of the Dell recomended update drivers.

 

Thirdly is the sound. It sounds like a mixmaster. The phillips that also came with the system is quiet as a mouse.

 

Any suggestions beside calling tech? I have enough calls into them already with little progress. I don't want to add to that.

 

Ian