To start, I am working with a Dell XPS 400 3 gb dual core, 4 gb ram, 250 gb raid 0, lots of power when the software lets it run. It has a Phillips DVD-RW drive. I have been able to burn CD's and DVD's, but somewhere in the past it stopped working. (Insert long story of life here).
I have once again recently tried to burn CD's, without much success and it's driving me crazy. I have been trying to get the burner back running, and I discovered something odd. I can burn DVD's without problem, at least up to the same 650 mb that I've tried to burn to a CD. I have been able to burn small CD's, say... 3mb or so. But if I try for a 22mb CD, it will crash the system. If I'm lucky, XP will respond and I can continue on, but the drive will not stop until I manually power off. The start/shutdown method will not work.
Before the issue of media comes up, I am using disks from the same stacks that I have burned from before and been successful. The system came preloaded with Sonic software that looks very much like the Roxio Creator 9. As an effort to regain use of the burner, I installed Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 9. I still have the same failure problems as with Sonic.
I have been looking through tech support's suggestions, checked DMA, device drivers, and so on. I don't quite understand why I can burn one disk but not the other. Are there two lasers inside? Could the CD laser be dirty or out of alignment? I can read disks just fine...
Suggestions?

I have had a stack of blank discs go bad and walked the stack to the trash! Bad is bad, so using the same stack is irrelevant!

Yes drives use 2 lasers, one for CD's and one for DVD's.

I guess XP's built in CD burning doesn't work either?

If it were my system, I would replace the burner as a troubleshooting step. A LightScribe DVD burner is about $40 and will run circles around your OEM burner.

On the other hand your symptoms are strange and no error messages. This indicates you are way past time to reformat and start from scratch…

Jim, thanks for the help. I had not thought about the built in XP burner software. I took your suggestion, took one of the same spindle blanks, and used the XP software to copy 670mb to a full size cd. I have been able to burn 3mb to a mini cd just days ago.
Media confirmed good.
Burner confirmed good.

Any Roxio oriented tips?

It does seem odd to me that Roxio and the OEM Sonic software hang up at the same point in burning.

Thanks, Allen

Personally, I would pick the one software I want, then uninstall all burning software.

Assuming V9 is the winner, follow the Clean Install instructions. -
http://kb.roxio.com/content/kb/Creator/000086CR
The point of all this is to remove any chance of conflicts and to clean up your HD a little…