CD Writer Probs

I am having a problem that has me baffled and frustrated. I burned two CD's this evening earlier and everything worked great. Then I went to burn a third one a little later and when I put the blank CD in the drive, the drive began running like it will if a Program CD or Installation CD is inserted. When I bring up my Burner program, it tells me to insert a blank disc. I thought my disk may have been defective so I've tried several new ones and still the same thing. I can play already burned CD's in the drive and they play fine but with a blank CD, it just sits there and "whirs" like it's trying to find something. I've run a complete scan and cleaned out the dust bunnies with compressed air and I have clicked on Hardware performance and it shows under the CD properties that everything is working fine. Any help advice, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!!!

Thanks!!

How long has it been since you've ran a laser cleaning disk in it? This is easy to overlook. Burning and playing are two different animals and a dirty lens can cause problems...

I tried to run a laser cleaner and when I click on my CD drive, a pop up keeps coming up telling me that this drive is not accessible and gives me a choice to retry or to cancel. My laser cleaner is one that I have to hit play on it for it to work and it tells you audibly what to do next. I cannot get the silly CD drive to cooperate at all and it's beginning to get the best of me. ANy more ideas or suggestions?

Very much appreciated,

Have you gone into device manager(right click my computer>properties>device manager tab)and see if there are any yellow splats with ! or? on the CD Drive? Also,try booting into safe mode and check the same place to see if there is more than one entry for the CD Drive. Click the + next to it. If there "are" 2 entries or more,and/or they have the splats,click once to highlight and choose "remove" at the bottom. Do this until all are removed. Boot back to normal mode and see if it's now detected correctly...