Vista - CD Burning Problems

Hi, not sure if this is in the right area but just joined so apologies if not

Im having a wee bit trouble burning cd's with both Itunes and Windows Media Player.

Firstly Itunes - I get a playlist ready to burn, insert a blank cd and click Burn. Have never had any problems in the couple of years I've had my laptop but now when I start the burn, the little status bar does the 'Initiating' part then says its writing the first track. Nothing happens for about 5-10mins, the status bar does not move then the disk ejects and i get a message saying Error 4000 has occured.

When this started i began using Windows Media Player to burn cd's which worked for a couple days. Now when i hit burn it comes up with 'Inspecting' next to the first track and nothing happens even if i leave it for half and hour.

Im just starting out as a DJ and have hundreds of songs waiting to be written to CD's so this is a major roadblock as you can imagine. I can plug my ipod into my decks but theres only so many 15-20MB songs an 8GB Ipod can hold

My mate came round one night with loads of his cds and spent a couple hours putting hundreds of his tracks onto my laptop so Im thinking maybe thats buggered up my disk drive or something, as it was after that the problem started.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated

Thanks