Pilgrim:
While posting this message, I saw cfitz's reply; it basically agrees with my recommendations for LG 8522B.
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Let me say that I'm pleasantly impressed by your patience as well. Unfortunately many users don't respond to our suggestions, and then it is not clear whether these suggestions worked.
As for your CD-ROM drive LG 8522B, you should get Multi-DMA mode 2
http://www.lgeus.com/Product/CD/crd_8521b.asp
(just goggle for "LG 8522B" to get a lot of other links).
As for disabling NeroCheck, typical sources don't say how much time you could save at start up. Thus, unless you check that having NeroCheck enabled leads to significant delays, you should leave it alone. On my XP Pro box, booting up is so quick that I don't care for any "speedups", most of which seem to be urban myth anyway.
Finally, since it's hard to guess how long it takes for you to replace discs, you could report mount times starting from closing the tray.