mr_fastener

Please help me. I have a Sony VGN-T350P laptop running fully updated windows XP. In addition, AVG 7.5 & SPY SWEEPER 5.5.7 are running in the background for protecting the operating system. I am current with all updates from Sony and just recently updated SonicStage to the 4.3 version. I have tried using Microsoft's TWEAK UI as well as reviewing all driver info to no avail to try and solve the following problem. While everything else about SS4.3 works (cpu playback from my extensive library, music transfer to my HD-1, HD-5's (2) & Mylo, & all music deletions, edits & downloads work fine), I am baffled as to why I CANNOT import my CD's to my library. It's probably something simple to solve but right now anytime I try to use my laptop's DVD-CD rom to import, the drive starts but then freezes. This also happens if I just try to listen to the CD on SS4.3 (WMP 11 playback/import is fine & I have tried to see if this is somehow conflicting w/ SS). Once SS freezes, nothing but CTRL-ALT-DEL will stop the program. Once I get back to the desktop no other icons respond or will start. In fact, if i try to turn off the cpu at this point, it will go through the motions to the "windows is turning off" screen but it never does (I just remove the battery & reboot). Now this has happened to me in other SS 3.X & 4.X versions (all but 3.2 or 3.4 I think) on this same laptop so I have developed work-arounds using my other laptops (mostly Toshibas) without complications but it is time consuming to port over music and I am running out of hard drive space on my HD's. What am I missing? Do you think that there is a conflict between my other media programs (DIVX, QUICKTIME, WMP, or my anti-spyware). Again, any help will be appreciated. What is frustrating is that my other laptops (non-sony) work perfectly (but they are my daughter's laptops for school so I am limited in their use). Other than that I do like the ATRAC codec and I am sad to see it abandoned by Sony. Between the players running close to 8-20 hrs, sound output for audio systems, convenient editing tools to cut & paste music, high quality playback with very compressed disk space usage (my cpu hard drive has over 19gb of music in 64kps while my HD-5 has about 16gb of music in 48kps), I am happy even with the related software & hardware issues. Perhaps, the biggest mistake Sony made was not communicating the benefits of their players and codec as compared to Apple (just as proprietary & even more limiting concerning transfers) & Windows.