"Chris F." wrote in message
...
This may be slightly off-topic, but this seemed to be the best place I
could find.


At this point I suspect that the laser is crapping out after it warms
up -
would I be right? This drive has (successfully) burned hundreds of CD's
and
DVD's in it's two-year lifetime, so failure would not surprise me. But I'd
still like to make sure before I shell out $50 for a new one.

Make sure the computer is doing nothing else at write time. Also, lots of
RAM helps.

Burning software that "gets behind" often causes problems like yours.