CD burner? XP issues??

Ok for some odd reason my CD burner isn't working. It will read discs,play music but wont burn. In WMP9 it says "insert a blank CD into the drive"(of course i have). Also tried NTI CD Maker and it says "No Disc Inserted". Under the drive properties the recording tab is there and its checked as it should be. Ive tried uninstalling the cd drive, and the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and rebooting and it still does not work. I thought it was a windows problem due to maybe something i had on it but after a clean fresh install it still does not work. The drive used to work but does not now. Should i just go buy a new burner?

I would say new burner, if you can't test it with another OS (ubuntu live cd?) or in a different machine.

But if it helps, I'm never surprised when optical recording drives die in whole or in part... and a replacement isn't going to be expensive.

edit - missed the part about the fresh install - seems likely that yes, it is boned.