Sony CD-RW CRX215E1 - cannot mount a CD-R

I am running XP Pro with a Sony CD-RW drive and I am having a very
difficult time creating CD's these days. No matter what brand of
blank CD-R I put into the drive, it (B's recorder gold, nero, WMP)
will not recognize it at any recording speed. If I put a blank cd-rw
disk in the drive and set the speed to 4x it will record (slowly). If
I put a game, music or any pre-recorded CD-R into the drive it boots
instantly.

Here is what I have tried:

1. Gone to B's recorder gold website and following all of their
troubleshooting tips

2. Gone to Sony's website and following all of their troubleshooting
tips

3. Contacted Sony's helpdesk and they can't figure it out

4. Tried Sony, Memorex and several other off-brands of CD-R disks

5. Removed the recorder from windows and had it re-add

6. Made sure the CD-R drive was on the Secondary Controller and the
Hard Drive was on the Primary. Tried several different
configurations.

7. Disabled DMA on all drives

I'm frustrated. Any help???????????/

Thanks.