I have an MSI 48x Cdrw connected as Master on the secondary channel which is about 1.5 years old and was burning OK until I decided to change the HD and installed WIN XP PRO. Now when burning an audio CD the first 6 tracks will play fine but the rest of the tracks will have a hiss or play distorted or skip! Recently I burned an audio cd which my car cd player couldnt even read it. The problem is for sure with my cdrw cause I tried playing audio cds which where burned on another machine and my car cd player played fine. I used the same brand of cds on different machines. The drive worked Ok when I had my old HD and Win98. "Exac Link" is enabled and im using Nero 5.59 with all the latest updates. Do I need a new drive?
have you tried to use a different software to see if the same thing happens? try the latest nero which is version 6.xx.
Also, you may wanna' try disabling the built-in burning feature of win xp, it might be conflicting with your cd burning software. I know all kinds of problems using Easy Cd creator in XP. Now I use Nero and it works perfectly.
Open My Computer. Right click on the CD-RW drive and hit properties. The tab furthest to the right, Recording, is what you want. Here you can uncheck a box to disable the WinXP recording features. Then just hit OK.