Reasons why a CD-RW drives performance drops?

I've been so pleased with my LG GCE8520B drive - burnt inumerable disks at
52x and never a coaster until recently. Now I'm having to reduce write speed
down to 8x to avoid coasters, and it has started having trouble even playing
disks - for example a divx or xvid film stutters a lot when playing - the PC
is'nt getting the data fast enough. I can understand a drive failing
completely, but what could cause this sudden reduction in performance?
Windows event viewer has started showing errors about the CD ROM - "The
driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1" & "The device,
\Device\Ide\IdePort1, did not respond within the timeout period"
Idon't know if it's worth trying to mess with the drive or just get a new
one...
TIA

> I've been so pleased with my LG GCE8520B drive - burnt inumerable disks at
> 52x and never a coaster until recently. Now I'm having to reduce write
> speed
> down to 8x to avoid coasters, and it has started having trouble even
> playing
> disks - for example a divx or xvid film stutters a lot when playing - the
> PC
> is'nt getting the data fast enough. I can understand a drive failing
> completely, but what could cause this sudden reduction in performance?
> Windows event viewer has started showing errors about the CD ROM - "The
> driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1" & "The device,
> \Device\Ide\IdePort1, did not respond within the timeout period"
> Idon't know if it's worth trying to mess with the drive or just get a new
> one...
> TIA
>
Do you have any games installed that use Starforce as their protection
method? If so, check that out.
John