It does sound like your DVD drive is not suitable for DVD+R and DVD+RW.
There are various types of DVD's and DVD drives vary as to which ones they work with, some do all, some do one or two.
Eg. DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-R DL, DVD+R DL, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RW DL, DVD+RW DL, DVD-RW2, DVD-RAM.
As stated by Sprogget, you can try to use a compatible disk, or depending on how many of the non-compatible disks you already own, you could buy a multi compatible DVD drive as they are pretty cheap these days anyway.