gus

ok. i've searched all over the internet for my problem, but i have not found any or much information about my specific problem.
i have a old computer (dont joke!). It's a sony vaio pcv-220, pentium II 300mhz, 288mb ram, 2 hard drives (6.4gig and 15gig), floppy drive and 2 cd drives (one only cd-rom and the other a cd-r drive (khypermedia 48x24x48)).
now here's my problem, since i installed windows xp w/ service pack 1 on my computer, i sometimes (actually most of the time) cannot burn to disk. i have my cd-rom drive set to master and the cd-r drive to slave, but the problem still occurs. it happens most of the time and when it happens, the burning program (nero) or "my computer" freezes or hangs for a long time, or until i eject the cd-r. and sometimes the there would be an error while burning and and i'd get a bad disk. also, when i insert a cd into the cd-r drive (blank or not), it will not read it.
i've used a cd cleaner disk over and over and the problem still occurs. i have cheap disk media, but i really dont think that's the problem and now im also beginning to think its my cd-r drive, which isnt really that old.
nothing in device manager states that there is anything wrong with the drive, so im clueless on what to do.
so, have any of you experienced this problem? if so, what did you do to resolve it?
thanks for any help!