CDRW problem that has me befuddled

[Bitman]

Originally posted by vsp
August and early September are LOADED with PS2 games that are must-buys

There's your solution, then. Sell the PC, and play PS/2 games for a year. When you're tired of that, buy a new machine, and everything on it will be working fine! :p

I'm still wedged on the theory that your UDMA is turned off, and the drivers are broken so as to hide the option from you. I might be way off (as so often happens when I'm wedged) but if it were my machine, I'd tear it apart until I knew what happened to the UDMA options. The symptoms are consistent with UDMA being disabled -- high CPU use, but limited speed. If the HD was too slow, your CPU use would be low, even as the burn job failed.