Roxio DirectCD's recording speed can't be adjusted anymore...

Thanks to read. I already posted in Roxio's forums but since i didn't got
any response yet, i'll try also here. Here's the snip of the message i've
posted the

Hi everyones. Thanks to read. I currently use ECDC version 5.3.5.10 under
Windows98SE with a Sony CRX-140E 8x-4x-32x cd-rw drive. I've been using
DirectCD for my automated backups for more than 2 years without any
problems. But since about 2 weeks, the CD-RWs became unreadable after 2~3
days. I use the plurial since i've tried 3 different CD-RWs of the Sony
brand. I've even tried an old batch that i've bought at another store a year
ago...and in less than 48 hours, the disk is useless. If i try the disk on
the CD-ROM drive, i have the same result than in the CD-RW drive...it
searches, and searches and searches indefenitely. Please note that this
problem happens only for the disks written since about 2 weeks. All the
other disks(same brand) written a month ago or even those written 2 years
ago are perfectly readable. I went to the conclusion that the Sony CD-RW
drive may be defective or dirty (bought it in october 2000). I carefully
opened it's casing (i'm familiar with electronics) and blasted (gently!) all
the optics with a can of pressurized air. This dislodged a lot of dust. I
even cleaned and relubed the guide where the optic pickup assembly moves on.
Reassembled and tested the unit. The previously bad disks where still
unreadable but since the recordings were made with the dirty optics, i
wasn't surprised. I then formatted another (new) CD-RW and gave it a try
with a few test files. In less that 36 hours, it was impossible to add
anything on it, the disk was, again, unreadable.

Since i use BootIt NG, a disk imaging software, and i still have an image
made from the C: drive in october, i imaged my actual configuration, and
reverted the C: drive to the october's image. I then did another CD-RW burn
with some test files, but at the time i'm writing this, it's only been 4
hours since then so i'll wait a day or two, and will check the results. To
further check if the CD-RW drive is the culprit, i also made a standard
recording using ECDC in Joliet mode2 format. Now to finally go to the point:
I noticed that with this actual version i use ( 5.3.5.10 ), i can't anymore
adjust the recording speed of the drive. I remember that two years ago when
i was with the version 5.1 of ECDC i had some drop-down menus to adjust the
read and write speeds. Now with 5.3.5.10 all i can see (check the following
link:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/kilo.watt/i...cd_options.gif ) is the
maximum read and write speeds of my CD-RW drive without anything to adjust
them! So here's the problem: All the blank CD-RWs i have and the ones that
already contains data that need to be updated from time to time are 1x-2x-4x
rated. So if i have to buy a new CD-RW drive, most of them are now of the
52x-32x-52x speed. So my question is, will the new burner will try to write
at it's maximum rewrite speed (let's say...32x) on the 4x max. rated CD-RWs
i have? Is DirectCD is smart enough to detect the 4x maximum rewrite speed
that my CD-RWs are rated for and adjust the burner's speed in consequence?

--
Alain(alias:Kilowatt)
Montréal Québec
PS: 1000 excuses for errors or omissions,
i'm a "pure" french canadian! :-)
Come to visit me at: http://kilowatt.camarades.com
(If replying also by e-mail, remove
"no spam" from the adress.)