Okay... next question, how old is your system and burner? It may or may not be relevent (the age of your system/burner), but what you're describing actually sounds like a drive that may be going bad, and it could very well sound worse the further out on the disc you go. And since it has worked in the past, we can be reasonably confident that you're doing what you want to do, and from your previous description, it sounds like you've written an audio CD. So, it may be a hardware problem.
Aren't you glad CD/DVD writers are commodity items that you can replace for $30-$40 now, rather than like my first CD-R drive, that would write at a blazing 2X speed, read at 4X, and cost $1200.
OK now at my pc from which I have tried burning
These are my two drives
HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GWA4164B [CD-ROM drive]
SONY CD-RW CRX217E [CD-ROM drive]
on checking the properties would appear 'enable CD recording on this drive' was disabled so I have now enabled it.
also, going into device manager it does appear the device is old - 2001! checked for new drivers but none found
With regard to trying a lower burn speed I reduced it to x24 and still no joy
Even tried a CD laser cleaner but no effect
Can I burn a CD to my DVD drive?
Any other suggestions?
Frantically trying to install Roxio 9 on laptop now but CD key# not recognised as I had installed it before then unistalled it and the fixes in Roxio won't work!!