I have been using a Pentium D dual processor computer with an NEC drive to burn DVDs. I burn a LOT of DVD master copies every week and then switch to my duplicators. I am burning on 16x Taiyo Yuden at 4x. This used to take approximately 11 mins. Or it did 2 days ago. Now it is constantly taking over 30mins and I have no idea why. Just overnight it suddenly slowed down a lot. This also happened with my other computer, just suddenly became VERY slow, VERY quickly. Even more concerningly it's rarely burning "cleanly" - often causes a flicker or some slight defect when burning. Previously I had burnt over 100 disks quickly with no problems. I didn't install any new programs, new drivers or anything else. Firefox updated itself but I can't see how that could possibly be relevent. The computer has 2 x 2.66 processors, 1gig of RAM. It seems the buffering of Data is much slower. Please help, why might this be happening! I am using Nero to burn.
You could check to see if your DMA is turned on, heres a guide http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/260038
As per gwendolin's advice - check DMA settings. Also ensure that you are using quality media for recording - e.g. Verbatim, TY's etc. and not burn too fast. Your specs seem OK - looks like a DMA problem or virus/spyware for sudden change in patterns.
