I had to download all kinds of drivers to get my

If you do not have a dvd burner and dvd burning software your computer will not recognize the disk(DVD) as being empty and burnable. CD's and DVD's are in different formats.

that could be a number a problems. wmp will make a cd but will not burn music to a dvd to make it play like a cd. as much as i know that sounds like the cd drive is self or your media player. try renstallig your os and go from there. and if you want to back your music, pictures, ect buy an external hard drive and copy it to that. ok well um if you want to back up your music to a disk put a disk into the computer and rather than using wmp go to your music folder and drag and drop your music to a disk, ok if you do that the disk will be a data disk not an audio cd meining you will not be able to play it in a cd player but your computer will read it and if you go the data disk direction you can put alot more songs on it.

cd-r80 are for music. Your best option is to buy a program like nero. I assume you are just dragging and dropping files to burn them right now. dvd's are more meant for backing up data or making movies because they hold a lot more data then a cd. Are you able to burn disc's at all? Just like all things involved with computers it can get complicated real quick.I hope this helps a little and if you have more questions let me know
Thanks,
Lee