My buds Dell is a 2000 model, although it was recently upgraded with more RAM and a faster processor, and he told me that all his recent burns were skipping on the first track, regardless of which player he used on playback (car, house, burner). I figiured he needed a new burner so I picked one up and installed it for him, which most of you know is a proverbial piece of cake . We proceeded to burn a couple cds at 40X speed (I burn mine at 52X and have no problems), and all seemed fine until the very end when we got an error message. We tried 3 times, lowering the burn speed each time, but the result was the same.

Anyway, it gets even stranger. I really had to skedalle, so I got in my car and popped one in to see what would happen and, oddly enough, it played perfectly! I then tried advancing to the second track, but got nothing! I tried skipping thru the rest of the tracks but with no sound whatsoever. WTF is going on? I ejected it, popped it back in and let it play thru the first track, and guess what? Yep, the second track was magically there, as was the 3rd, the 4th, th 5th and so on. The other CD-R was exactly the same, the first a Sony, the second an I-Mation. So what gives? I can't figure this one out, but maybe some of our resident PC/burner gurus can shed some much-needed light on this?

Swish