Been there...
In the end, I junked the Yamaha CDRW and bought an HP one, and now use the HP software which writes exceeding swiftly and with no hiccups whatsoever. The problem was the Yamaha, not Nero.
Nero is good, but intuitive it ain't (not for a thicky like me, anyway).
One thing I did find was that Nero had to be told to CLOSE the CD, and that other drives couldn't read one that wasn't closed.
Leaving it open was clever, because it allowed continuous backups - but it confused Windows (and me).
Might help, might not.
Agree the MS stuff is rubbish. The HP is excellent, but I don't know if it works with non-HP drives. It can be downloaded from the HP website (or from a link from there, I forget now).