HI Brigitte

I apologize if this is the wrong group for this question. If there's a
better group to ask, please point me in that direction.

I have an audio cassette I need to record onto my hard drive, so that I can
decrease the speed, then put it onto a CD-ROM.

To record the cassette onto your computer you could use any number of
free or shareware programs. I've been using Audacity (search for the
download on Google).

Alternatively - you could use Goldwave (free for evaluation purposes)
- which will record your tape onto your PC as a .wav file.

To change the speed of the recording you can use Goldwave - it has an
effect called 'timewarp' - which will slow down or speed up the
digitised audio. If you have a CD-writer on your PC you can then
'burn' the speed-corrected audio onto a CD - failing that you should
be able to record it back onto your cassette tape recorder (on a
different tape!)

You should not need any new hardware - as it sounds as if you already
have 'proved' that you can get sound from your cassette tape onto your
PC via Windows recorder.

If it's only for speech then you could reduce the 'sample rate' of the
recording - which will make the resulting file smaller and easier to
handle on the PC.

Good luck!

Adrian
Suffolk UK