This looks like a dogs dinner! Burning software of the type you have can determine the maximum burning speed from info written by the manufacturer onto the non-user portion of the CD. But there is no current CD media of which I know confined to 1x speed.

The burner also mediates between the source device and itself. But I don't see a problem there.

Next, I notice that the devices you use MIGHT be Nero compatible (probably are because it uses the ASPI layer - but a special layer is required for Windows ME). Theyt are not truly CloneCD compatibele, so we'll disregard that. But Nero and the other software would need to be properly registered. Cracked versions or expired demos behave oddly. Demo mode only works at 1x - but I'm sure you know all that.

So on to your speed options. From what you describe, it seems that you can choose the speed but the burn fails at speeds higher than 1x. If you have no licensing problems, this tells me that your hard disk can't supply the data as fast as the burner would like to burn it - that's the dreaded buffer under-run. This can be caused by one of two things:

1) Another intensive application or Windows functron is running at the same time as Nero.
2) Your disk (HDD) is totally screwed up - fragmented.

The optimum conditions for any CD burning software is:

a. The HDD needs to be on the primary IDE channel
b. The Burner needs to be the master on the secondary IDE channel
c. The Reader needs to be the slave on the secondary IDE channel
d. The HDD FAT system for ME should be FAT32
e. The HDD should not be so fragmented that the file you are burning is all over the place
f. The burning software is legal (no risk due to cracked serials)

How do you compare with the above optimum conditions?