Once, I was going to rip an album I had on cd and convert the FLAC files to 256kbps .m4a files to iTunes, BUT PowerDVD 18 decided to open up and automatically play the album through my disc drive.

This doesn't sound like a bad thing, BUT I haven't told you everything yet. My disc drive is not built into my laptop. It is, in fact, portable and works through two USB cables that connect from the drive to the two USB sockets in my laptop.

Here's the important thing: in the instruction manual that came for the drive, it says that playing a disc directly from the drive (EXCEPT for playing a Blu-Ray disc, which is what I purchased the drive for) WILL CAUSE DAMAGE TO THE DISC AND DRIVE.

Is my CD damaged? I don't know, as PowerDVD only managed to play the first few seconds of the first track on the album before I shut down the program, and I only listen to my music through .m4a files converted from tracks on CDs, the CDs I use for physical backups.

HOWEVER when I put a Blu-Ray disc in the drive to see if it will play the disc well using PowerDVD, I experienced sound problems and the picture stopping and slowing down on a consistent basis. BUT when I ejected the disc, disconnected the drive, shut down PowerDVD and restarted my computer, I tried the disc again and everything was running smoothly.

I'm not sure that doing this everytime I put a Blu-Ray disc in and I experience the same problems is the exact solution to those problems, as I'm still experimenting at the moment.

If you have been so patient with me as to have read this far, can you please tell me if there is a way of switching off the autoplay function in PowerDVD 18? I don't want my disc drive to be damaged any further the next time I rip one of my CDs. (Then again, I'm not EXACTLY certain that it's my drive that is the problem, but I am PRETTY CONVINCED.....)