I've been using the latest version of EAC with both LAME MP3 and Ogg Vorbis encoders without a problem for a little while now. However, yesterday, I went to rip and encode an album, went to go get a drink, and when I came back, I noticed that EAC was frozen at 85.4% extraction. I let it go for about ten minutes with no change. Task Manager could not close out EAC. I had to reboot my computer to close out EAC.

Now, I use a Plextor CD-R/CD-RW CD-ROM drive that's capable of 52x reading. Extracting was obviously slower than that with EAC, typically it would be about 17x, which is fine. However, upon rebooting due to that EAC freeze, the most speed I've been able to extract at is 4x. I still have the exact same settings I had before. After a couple of tries with various CDs not getting above 4x, I removed EAC's registry settings, and did a complete fresh re-install of EAC. I went back and re-input all the settings I like to use, and it seemed to detect my Plextor CD-ROM drive just fine. However, when I tried ripping & encoding a CD again, it would not get above 3.5x. I went under the EAC Drive settings, and noticed that the speed options dropped from the highest available of 40x to 8x...

This is really frustrating me, as rips that would have taken approximately ten minutes before are now taking up to fifty... Any advice and/or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Did you try to test a rip with plextools / EAC in burst mode? Can you get higher speeds there? If not your drive is most likely damaged...

Frack. I guess it is damaged then. I have no idea how that happened, it has been working fine for the past year and a half until yesterday. Sigh. Oh well. I just ordered a new Lite-On CD-RW drive from NewEgg.com. I should most likely have it by Wednesday.