I'm stumped with this cd burner issue. What to do?!

[EPS Sniper]

Ok, here goes:

I've had my burner, a liteon 52x24x52 (52246s), for quite some time now and it has this weird problem. I orginally had nero 5.5 on my computer and everything would burn perfectly. Then my friend gave me a copy of nero 6 (I know, shouldn't have done it) to put on my computer. After upgrading to 6.3, I couldn't burn an audio cd right. What would happen is the the final few tracks of the cd would skip terribly. First I thought it was my car. Other cars had the some problem. Then I thought it was my media. Other media had the same problem. I replaced my Antec 300w powersupply with a true430 watt psu. Then I got a new, grounded, shielded cable for my drive. Nothing solved this problem. I thought it was just the Nero that was screwing up, so I went ahead and deleted the software, destroyed the disc, and put on my OEM copy of nero 5.5. However I still have the same problem. To put it in simpler terms:

-Put on Nero 5.5 after uninstalling Nero 6
-Replaced power supply
-Replaced cable
-Bought different media
-Used multiple cars, dvd players, etc, with the same result.
-The drive is a Liteon 52246s and is approximately one year old.
-Using Nero 5.5.10.54
-Audio CDs skip in final few tracks.

Sorry for the LONG post, but I really do need help fixing this. I know that the drives these days are cheap (I paid 55 for mine a year ago, and now they're 30), but I would like to try to fix this problem without resorting to buying a new drive. Should I upgrade the firmware, or RMA the drive, or anything else? Let me know what you think.

Thanks so much, and feel free to move this post if its in the wrong place.