Thanks, Bush - I have chased my tail here and failed miserably so far, so I think I'll just have to give up and use the lappie to burn audio. I have checked with TSST corp and the firmware is correct. Disk is TDK CD-R80 (or so it says). Just appears to be an incompat between my CDplayer and the DVD/CD drive. I will eventually try with a different brand and i have yet to burn a DVD in the drive.
Any links to the utilities you mention please?