I just installed Roxio 8 and whenever I try to do burn something the system blogs down to a standstill. I loaded the Drag a song at start up could that be using all of the system resources. Does any one else's system just die?

Drag a song? Do you mean "Drag-to-Disc"?

You can try disabling that via Start->Run. Type in MSConfig, startup tab, deselect "DrgtoDsc".
However, this is probably only the problem if you have more than one packet writing software on your computer (EG: Nero InCD, Drag-to-Disc, Sonic DLA). If this is the case, then uninstall one of them (I'm sure many people on this forum will tell you to uninstall all of them ), and try again.

Otherwise, I'd suggest you post some computer specs, including the steps you took to make the burnt disc, and what is on it / what type of disc it is (DVD+R, CDRW,DVD-RAM, etc).

It could also be being caused by Media Manager doing it's first scan of your drive.Do Control,Alt,Delete and open Task Manager,look at the Processes tab and see what's using up all your CPU cycles.