make sure in your Hardware Setting (Device manager) that all your IDE phripheral's are set to DMA (click the box) your Hard drive & all CD rom's should be set to this.

if you nead a new CD writer get a Lite On 48 x 12 x48 they only cost £38.
might sound cheep and nasty, NO FRILLS but take my work for it, instead of spending £100 on a plextor, get this.
it looks a bit box'y like a volvo, but it does the job realy well,,, i can burn a full disk in 3mins, its buffer under run aswell, so you can do other stuff on ya comp..

i use nero.
if its ****ing up try clicking "determin maximum speed"... and the software will test the max speed you can write at.

like a i said ENABLE "DMA" on your hard drive & what ever CD roms / dvd roms you have,,,, this makes a helluva differance.