Optical Drive Problems

I have a Windows XP Pro desktop system, Athlon 3400+ cpu, 512 gB RAM, large HDD, SP3 updated and in place, all hotfixes up to date. Card reader installed off the USB root. I built this system myself. However, recently, the optical drive refuses to properly recognize blank DVDs of any variety. Here goes: Toshiba SD-R5372 CD-DVDW drive - attached to IDE channel as Master. HDD is SATA. Using Windows Explorer (WE) except where indicated. WE shows the empty drive as a "CD/DVDW drive" lettered as "D" Insert commercial music CD - prompts for action and plays fine. Insert new CD R/W - no prompt for action but writes in UDF form fine, reads fine. Insert previously used but erased CD R/W - no prompt but writes and reads fine. Insert DVD+R with data folders/files already recorded elsewhere - no prompt for action but reads fine. Insert new DVD+R disc - drive blinks 23 times, LED stays fully lit, WE changes the D drive & shows "CD Drive". Attempt to drag and drop from HDD and I get, "Windows has encountered a problem trying to copy this folder. Retry/Skip/Cancel". Insert new DVD-R disc - drive blinks 23-26 times, LED stays fully lit, WE changes the D drive & shows "CD Drive". Attempt to drag & drop yields same error as above. Insert new DVD+RW - drive LED blinks 21-23 times, LED extinguishes, WE changes to drive to show "CD Drive". Attempt to copy yields same error. I then mounted a trial version of Nero 9, it would copy data to CD-R and CD-R/W but Nero barfed on all new DVD types begging me to insert a writable disc when I was feeding it fresh discs off the spindles. That experiment failed so I have uninstalled Nero and I've cleaned up the registry (CCleaner). Discs are: CD = Verbatim DVD-R = Playo, DVD+R = Verbatim, DVD+RW = Verbatim. I uninstalled the optical drive through Dev Mgr, rebooted, drive was re-established and lettered correctly but still not recognizing DVD media. I don't understand what's going on. I have two other computers here that work fine. This one has some condition in either the hardware or the OS. I'm guessing it's the OS. Could I please ask for some guidance on how to troubleshoot this drive? Thanks.

Being that you built the computer and are probably technically savvy enough, I would recommend removing the drive from that computer and plugging it into one of the other computers. See how the drive responds in the other computer. My guess is that the drive is bad and it will respond the same faulty way on a different computer. But, at least it will pinpoint if it is a hardware or software problem. Good luck.