Get EAC (Exact Audio Copy)... I was having huge problems ripping CDs until I picked that up. Turns out it was mainly read problems, not write problems, with my system. It takes forever, but the copies are much much cleaner than anything else I've tried... (And if you do choose to compress them to mp3s, you can download LAME and EAC will call it as an external routine).
Did I mention EAC is only $20 and LAME is free?
Did I mention EAC is only $20 and LAME is free?