First of all, let me say that I spent twenty minutes writing a post before this one and when I clicked on the "Preview Post" button, to my utter dismay, I discovered that the site logged me out and my post was lost.

Anyway, I am a new user to these forums and would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me solve my problems.

Just a couple of weeks ago I installed a clean copy of Windows XP Pro on my notebook computer for academic reasons. I was previously using XP Home, which ran all of my hardware and software perfectly. My problems did not start until after I installed XP Pro. I have installed the latest drivers for all of my hardware and ran Windows Update to install SP2 and security updates only.

Ever since installing XP Pro I have encountered the following errors:

CD-RW drive will not burn discs
I am using B's Recorder GOLD5 to burn discs. Whenever I try to burn a CD-R I encounter the following error:

An ATAPI error occurred.
An illegal request has been reported by ATAPI command.
< Error No : aa052700 >

additional note: the "Recording Speed" drop down list only lists "2X".

DVD/CD audio stutters
Whenever I listen to a CD or watch a DVD, the audio stutters repeatedly (once per second on average). I have noticed that the drive's status indicator lights up whenever the audio stutters. This problem is not confined to any particular software application. I can read non-audio data from the drive fine.

additional note: in ITunes, if I listen to a song on my hard drive while importing songs from a CD, the audio will begin to stutter, even though I am not playing back from the CD.

Computer crashes randomly
This has nothing to do with the DVD/CD-RW drive, but it has started happening to me after I installed XP Pro. Sometimes when I am launching/playing a game, the system will freeze or crash unexpectedly. There are no error messages. I have also experienced page fault errors twice in the past couple of weeks, but not recently.

Here are my system's specifications:

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3400+ (DTR chip)
* driver version 1.1.0.0 (AMD)
Memory: 1GB DDR333
Hard Disk: 60GB 7200RPM HTS726060M9AT00
* driver version 5.1.2535.0 (Microsoft)
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro
* driver version 6.14.10.6378 (ATI)
DVD/CD-RW: Slimtype Combo LSC-24082K
* driver version 5.1.2535.0 (Microsoft)
* "Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM device." is turned OFF

I have Norton Anti-Virus 2004 and ZoneAlarm installed on my computer, but I have disabled them when running tests. I have installed and run Ad-Aware and RegCleaner, but to no avail. Any help, comments or input, again, is greatly appreciated. I use my notebook both at home and work, so being able to burn files to a CD is the greatest priority. Feel free to come over and hit my computer with a wrench anytime.