I have an old old mix cd I made over 10 years ago. I want to rip it but skip the errors so I can get a half working copy just to distinguish the songs so I can redo the CD using FLAC files rather the Low Quality MP3s. I tried k3b but it always freezes up and hangs on the first track.

Have you checked to see if K3b has managed to actually launch any underlying processes to conduct the ripping operation, or if it has hung before this could happen?

Actually I tried k3b, but I forgot exactly which function I used. I set it to ignore errors 1 time. I tried Exact Audio copy in a Windows VM. Same thing, trying to ignore errors. Both make progress but both are making the drive sound like a car wreck. Both are taking forever to rip the tracks. I am talking upwards of 30 min for a track.

The disc is in REALLY bad shape, and some of the front coating with the dye has come off. However, I would be content with something as simple as 30 seconds worth of each song. Just enough to hear it, and possibly run it through one of those song recognizer apps on my android if I can't remember the song name or artist. I don't care about gaps in the audio, or anything at all. The source material from the CD will simply be used as reference and then I can burn a new copy from my digital collection.

Unfortunately the reading of damaged discs is often a very slow process, especially when software attempts to correct for errors (by trying to re-read the same section of the disc, etc). The underlying software K3b uses is likely trying to compensate here, which would explain the noise and excessive amount of time taken.

You'll need to check the options of "readcd" and potentially perform the operation manually (Setting retries to 0 or 1 should help speed things up).

Going off memory I was not able to choose 0. 1 was as low as I could go, I ended up letting it go while I was gone last night and sure enough it took about a whole 3-4 hours. This was using EAC in a Win 8 VM but I dont think that matters much here. The key settings are the same.

Unfortunately to my knowledge it is usually fairly difficult to "skip" or "ignore" errors - as errors trigger hardware / kernel level action, which usually reduces the drive speed, and can often interrupt the reading process.