Hmm... Son has 4.18.8 and Burned a couple cd's this morning. LW has Nothing to do with Burning. There has Never been and Prolly never will be a LW Burner.
Your files are on the HDD. Sounds like there are Issues with your Burning Software.
Best thing to do is get as far away from WMP as possible.
Not to sure about Roxio.
I use this...
AVS Video Tools, Video Converter, Audio Tools, Video Editor, DVD Copy.. which is NOT Free, but a Great software Package.