NEC-3520a running really slowly these days......please help!

[SatchVai2k]

I just started burning some family dvd's this week for Christmas presents, and my burner has significantly slowed down. I have an NEC nd-3520a installed in a eMachines AMD 2800 machine with a gig of memory and a 160g harddrive. The computer is running as smooth as can be, except when I rip and when I burn. Could it be a hardware problem with the drive? I defragged the harddrive, ran virus scan, and checked to make sure DMA was activated.

I use DVD Shrink to rip, and NERO to burn. Both are running extremely slow. Both are taking right around a half hour to either rip and/or burn. THese are not sophisticated dvds either, just dvds I created with my Panasonic dvd recorder of home movies. THey have no encryption and basic menu navigations.

FOr the record, I have used Imation and Sony media, and it is slow on both. I haved used both of these before wtih no problems. I was burning earlier this week with no problems. Any help would be much appreciated.....I really don't want to have to reformat to see if it's a software issue.

THanks a lot in advance for any advice,
Chris

[GKar]

Did you make any changes to your system, hardware or software? Are you ripping and burning with the same drive? You may want to look at your Nero log file and look if it is in DMA mode or check Nero Info Tool and see if Nero sees the drive in DMA mode. The Device Manager and Nero may see things differently.