DVD rom drive not reading correctly

My DVD Combo Drive a Plextor PX-712SA seems to not want to read any media be it dvd or cd correctly....what happens is when its reading the media the audio whether its from the media or the computer itself sounds jittery and skips...and whne playing a DVD movie i notice the video skips once in awhile though its not nearly as bad as the audio...of checked the DMA settings and it seems to be all set correctly...plus i have the latest firmware...for some reason plextor doesnt have drivers for xp systems...if u guys could give me some info in appercitate it...

Your drive is supported by Win2000/XP, so there won't be any separate drivers for it. Try the simple things first, if you haven't already, clean the laser lens.

Another useful test is to play a CD in analog mode (with Digital Audio disabled), but specs suggest that drive may not have analog output. If it does, this is useful to see whether it's the drive having reading problems (analog CD play will still be bad) or if the processing of the digital data is the problem (DMA, sound drivers, CPU usage etc).