CD Drive Ripping Slowly? Reverted to PIO Mode

Q. My CD drive is ripping very slowly?
A. Try ripping to Test Conversion (set to no speed limit), this rules out a slow encoder, an average CD drive might start at x10 and get to x25 for the last CD track (the x speed can be seen on the tool bar whilst ripping). If the speed is obviously slow, around x2 and your computer seems sluggish whilst ripping, then the cause might be Windows has switched the interface to CD Rom drive to a slower PIO mode. When ripping from a scratched CD if the CD drive takes too long to give out audio, Windows decides there is a fault with the CD drive and switches permanently to PIO (from DMA), which is bad for CD ripping.

Check that your IDE controller is set to DMA mode, look in Device Manager (press Windows Key then Break, select Device Manager) looking under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers >> Primary IDE Channel (it could be named different on your system, right click >> properties) 'Advanced Settings' *** or Secondary IDE Channel if CD is on second channel ***. Look at the current transfer mode, if it does not say DMA, there is a problem. For a fix search google.com for 'restore cd-rom DMA transfer mode'.