I have a mitsuishi dvd-rom that used to rip dvd's very quickly in about 15 mins ripping at about 5x (using smartripper), all of a sudden it has slowed down to ripping at 1.2x .... re-installed winxp but still the same thing.. what should i have the ide settings to? because iv'e tried uninsalling ide driver but still cant change the transfer rate to dma its on PIO??

It should be on DMA mode m8. I had this a couple of weeks ago. You'll have to delete the IDE channel that it's on completely, restart windows and it will reinstall your IDE channel. You should then be able to change it to DMA.

If reinstalling IDE channel from Windows does not work, take it back another step and check the BIOS settings for the IDE channels. 'AUTO' should work. Just make sure it's not set to PIO. If necessary set it to UDMA.