On my studio DAW I have an odd problem that has been plaguing me for a while now.  When I try to playback an audio CD in my internal CD/DVD drive I get pops and stutters in the playback.  So I got a new external USB drive...plugged it in...and got the same glitches.  Now...if I uninstall the internal drive in device manager...and then reboot...it plays fine...until the next time it doesn't.  Since it's happening to both the internal drive and a brand new external drive I don't think it's the hardware.  Anybody have an idea what could be happening??
 
 

What audio device is playing your CD's? Contention between drivers for a built in audio chipset and a dedicated audio interface has done this for me in the past. Is your internal audio system disabled? Or alternatively if you are using the computer's built in audio for playing CD's (the default) have you disabled your other audio devices?

My internal should be disabled...but thanks...ill check it out:-)

Also, see if the CD-ROM has a setting to disable ECO mode (where the disk spins down). I've found that most media player won't fetch audio until the buffer is almost empty and it takes too long for the drive to spin back up.
 
Regards,
Dan