The Firmware Page

Anyone know if this firmware automatically disables the Nero SMART-BURN feature even if you check the box in the settings?

Hm, why should it?
Could you try it with another burning app, eg. DVDDecrypter or ImgTool maybe?

no it does not disable the smart burn feature

No apps like that at work, but maybe it's just a glitch and I may need to install again. The max burn speed it showed for the first burn was 40X, I then rebooted and burned the second burn at 52X. Sounds like even though I enable it in that one window just before burning, something is causing it to give that error message.

Does anyone have any suspicions whether this problem (or just the error message only and not really a problem yet) I'm having is related to my system/OS setup/settings and there's nothing I can do about it or does this sound like something an uninstall/reinstall of the Nero OEM might fix? I'm thinking of trying the uninstall/reinstall, but just wanted some input before doing it. Thank you.

three steps you can try:

1) unistall the drive via device manager and let windows redect the drive
2) Ensure its running in DMA mode in device manager
3) Unistall and reinstall nero or try through Recordnow or similar software

I'll try those tomorrow and see what happens. Thanks.

Finally uninstalled/reinstalled per these directions and looks like everything is fine now. It still showed my 40X as max when I first started to set up the first burn after reinstall, but I stopped before burning and exited then got back in and it showed 52X as max burn. I enabled Smart-Burn and the only thing that it said during the burning process that was strange is that it couldn't burn onto the Philips 52X CD-R at 52X and that it was burning at 40X instead. Must be some sort of media issue or this office computer with only 480MB of RAM available (shared on-board video) on a P4 2.0 Celeron just doesn't cut it. It works and that's the important thing. Thanks for all the help.