About the DMA thing... I'm using a spanish version of Windows XP, so instructions may be inaccurate....
Go to your desktop, right-click "My PC", select "Device Manager",
In that list, go to "IDE/ATAPI Controllers"
Then, with each one of "IDE Master channel" and "IDE secondary channel" that appears in the list, you should:
Right-click "IDE Master/Secondary Channel", select Properties.
Go to the Advanced Tab... Then for each device, in the Transfer Mode list, select "DMA if available".... In the textbox below the list you will see the UDMA mode that you are using (that's automatic, hope it to be high). In my example it's UDMA Mode 3.
Screenshot
About the sound plugin... You can try two things: If you want performance use the Eternal SPU Lite, If you want quality use the Eternal SPU.
Here's an example of my sound config:
Screenshot 2
Other thing is that you shouldn't be using Peops CDR plugin, if you made the image you don't need the CD anymore... Try using mooby2's CD Image plugin.
There are some games that work better in ePSXe version 1.5.2, and there are also some games that need some command-line to work right... As an example, Chrono Cross works better in version 1.5.2 if no command line is provided (it works right in version 1.6.0 if you provide the right command line)... You should try V1.5.2 also...