Thanx guys for the help. There's no uninstall option in Add/remove programs or in my addremove4 good prog for the Intel Application Accelerator. Thought about flashing in DOS and figured it would be too much of a hassle. I'm running xp pro with no updates. So I decided to boot into safe mode and run the flash from there. It worked without a problem. Used nero info tool to check the firmware and it's in there. Just to test it I ripped The Mummy movie files only to the HD with dvddecrypter. (4.9gigs) Did the same yesterday and the read rate didn't get over (2.2). After the firmware upgrade---Average Read Rate: 8,531 KB/s (6.3x) - Maximum Read Rate: 11,136 KB/s (8.2x)---Operation Successfully Completed! - Duration: 00:09:35. My congrats to the guy who hacked the firmware and thanx again to you guys for the help.