I didn't get far last night. It took too long. My first experiment was to disable all startup items. All I left running were taskmanager and the system tray. Unfortunately it produced no joy, MJ was unstable after ripping 2 CDs and crashed midway through the third. I took note of the fact that when the MJ interface freezes and songs skip, the mouse also freezes and then jumps to a new location. This happened as part of previous instability, but I didn't pay much attention to it. It looks like MJ got about 4 to 5 tracks farther than average, but that is within the range of variability I have seen trying other workarounds.
Next I tried ripping from the Sony CD-RW. This morning, after ripping 2 CDs, the second of which was started before bed, I did not see the same level of stop and go behavior. Playing was smooth except when selecting MJ menu items, and the mouse didn't freeze, or playback skip like it did during the first experiment. I did have the visualization and EQ go AWOL just before bed when I right clicked on it unchecked the show EQ and Vis item, then rechecked it to have it not reappear. This morning I tried turning on and off various options, screens, tabs and views to bring them back. When I tried to select a tab from the big window MJ crashed. I don't know if this is related to my ripping problems or not. I presume not, and decided to repeat this experiment cleanly. I restarted MJ, started another CD recording from the Sony and went to work. I did note that the Sony behaves very differently than the DVD-ROM did. On a track with a scratch, the DVD-ROM progressed steadily but spent much time paused at the end before going to the next track. With the Sony, the disk, which was spun up to a very fast speed, slowed way down and ripping slowed to a crawl before speeding back up to either finish the track and for subsequent tracks.
Tonight and tomorrow I will try both drives, with 3 CDs each, with DMA off. If any of this sets of a recognition bell or helps developers improve MJ then this may be worth it.
Sentient