I recently started to have problems with my CD/DVD drive. I get CRC errors
every time I try to burn more than about 2G onto a DVD using RecordNow. I
tried a new program and had success. The new program had a log file and it
provided some interesting info for the test burn that I did. It told me that
a about 4.2G took about 2.5 hours and that the average recording speed was
0.4X. This seems slow for a 2005 model laptop (Pentium M 730 processor 730,
1.6GHz).

I've been chasing my tail thinking that the problem is to do with burning
but I've just put a music CD in and found that the audio is a bit garbled.
I've tried some pre-recorded DVDs and the audio is also slightly garbled.
Any video or audio content from the hard drive is fine.

How can I tell what my problem is? Can I check the physical characteristics
of the drive eg RPM? Could it be a driver problem, virus or an altered
setting?