I hope you can point me on the right track with this problem. I recently bought a Ricoh 20x CD Writer, mainly as a backup device. However, I thought as a bonus I could use it to clone my music CDs for the car. I haven’t had any luck. I am using Adaptec Easy CD Creator and CD Copier Deluxe 3.5b. Whenever I try to use either of these product to copy audio tracks the whole PC freezes. The writer is attached using IDE cable. I have a Celeron 333 running Windows 98 and the CD ROM drive is 50x. Any clues?

Before copying music CD’s you should check and comply with the copyright conditions (usually printed on the CD and the liner notes). There are also people, who want to record their own music, or that of the local band , etc. and for these users, you raise an interesting question. The first thing to do is, to track down whether this problem is software or hardware specific. I suggest you download another CD-R application off the internet (a large selection can be found at download.com) and see if it works. If it does, the problem is probably to do with your software. In this case, you can either search the manufacturers internet site for a update for the software or you can continue to use the software, which you downloaded, that works. If your computer continues to misbehave, then I would first check that your CD ROM supports digital audio extraction. In the version of CD Copier Deluxe which I have (3.01a) the test can be done from the ‘Tools’ menu > ‘System Tests’ and then the ‘Audio Extraction’ tab. If your CD-ROM does not support audio extraction, test your CD-R for digital audio extraction compliance that will permit you to use your CD-R drive as both a reader and as a writer. If your CD-ROM does support digital audio extraction, I suggest that your drivers need updating.. You should be able to do this by going to the manufactures website. In the event that the problem still persists, there may be a system conflict. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and open the ‘System’ control panel. Click the ‘Device Manager’ tab and expand the ‘CDROM’ tree. Click on your CD-R drive, followed by clicking on the ‘Properties’ button. Under the ‘Device Status’ heading, you should be able to see whether there are any conflicts. If there is, I suggest you consult your manual/manufacturer to see how to change the jumpers, etc… on your drive to remove the conflict.