im going to try to explain this the best i can. i got my 8601 and didnt realize it was a POS, luckily i found this website and you guys had a number of ways to save my life by changing the firmware. it worked wonders on my burning capabilites. im not sure what happen but i was able to burn at an amazingly 12x dvd-r. well the mem crashed on me so i had to redo the whole harddrive(long story), so i reinstalled everything and i can't get back to my old settings,

has anyone else changed a 8601 to 1620 and been able to burn at 12x?

now im burning at 4x and it keeps failing, and has so far cost me 20 dvd's any help would be greatly apperciated...

I'm not sure but I think it's the media. What brand / mediacode are you using now.
Benq and Philips are better +dvdr burners, except when your using real quality -dvdr media.
Go get some real good +dvdr, and not those "elcheapo" media like 100 disks for € 10,-.

Maxell DVD-R, so they aint no el-cheapo, but i bought a hundred of them and the first 50 went fine, but after my crash it went poop.

What motherboard do you have, is it amd or intel. Maybe driver conflict, have you checked everything, maybe aspi need to be install again. There can be so many things that can have influence on the performing of your pc.