Can't you get your hands on another drive to swap out to test against?

Well, I don't have another one laying around outside of a computer. I could borrow the one out of my Mac I guess. Of course now I seem to be having the problem of it not happening everytime on the same CD so it will be hard to test.

Remember that some CD-ROM drives... (well, mostly burners actually) have firmware that can be upgraded if you go to the mfr's web site. Maybe it just needs that.

Yeah, I tried that. The drive is apparently a Genica BCD E520C, but I don't see anything on the manufacturer's site that implies it is upgradable.

-Mike