Nope, this is a new problem.  The DVD burner worked fine for a year or so, I've got the NEC-6500A drive

I had the identical problem. After a phone call to tech I discovered that my identical problem was that the drive really doesn't burn just reads DVDs. So I returned to my invoice and saw that it said dvd-cdr/w. Very easy to mistake the poor lableing!!!!!! I certainly hope Dell addresses this issue to prevent others from making this mistake!!!!!

i would use the firmware update.  as long as there arent any little kids or pets around and your arent likely to have a power outage (storm) it should be fine. It sounds to me like the firmware has something screwy going with it because it happens in so many different programs. also if your optical drive has a driver associated with it (most dont but some do) you could try updating that as well. i hope this helps.

All right, I'll give it a shot... but good call, I will wait a couple days as we're just about guaranteed a power outage sometime soon here in Seattle.... so if anybody reads this and has any other ideas, let me know!  Thanks