I have had this problem for 3+ years on 5 or 6 different computers
(and using maybe 5-6 different brands of CDs) - so it is not the
hardware nor the media.   Always on Win-XP Home edition.

This happens about 50% of the time for me and it is getting
frustrating and expensive:

1. I put a blank CD in the drive.
2. WinXP recgonizes the CD and pops up the explorer window (blank of course)
(if I go to my computer, and right click on the CD-drive E: and look
at properties, I see the the disk has 0 bytes used, 702 MB free)
3.  I drag the files (say 600Mb worth) into the CD Drive (E:) window
4. I click the option (on the left side of the explorer window) that
says "Write these files to CD" ...
5. It prompts me for the CD name and I click next
6. The status bar says it is writing to CD ...
7. then after 10-15 mins I get the message "Cannot Complete the CD
Writing Wizard" .. There was an error in the writing process, the disc
may nolonger be usable"
8. When I check the disk properties - there are now 0 bytes free. 
Nothing I can do will write the the disk and I need to toss it.

AGAIN - this happens on many different computers with many different
brands of disks  (so it cannot be a hardware problem, or bad luck with
disks).

The Windows CD wizard works about 50% of the time.  (so therefor I am
wasting half the disk and hours of time).

What am I doing wrong?  How can I correct this.  (ie I am looking for
settings etc, not for someone to sell me new software).

Thanks

I thought Win XP Home had a special Cd burning program. Possibly Roxio
Cd Creator. Though maybe that depends upon the builder. My Dell came
with Roxio, and I know others who have Nero.  I have no problem
burning CD's with Roxio, though I usually burn iso's for Linux.

Look through your START menu, for either Roxio or Nero.

There is another solution if this doesn't work. There is a Linux
distro, puppy now at ver. 2.10. One can boot on it in your CD reader,
it loads completely into RAM, then you remove the puppy CD, and then
can burn using the now empty CD writer.

I say 2.10, or an older version 1.06, because there were some
temporary problems around 2.00  and 2.01.

The only problem, of course, is burning the puppy iso after you
download it, around 70MB.  But, it will work on almost all modern
computers if you do get it burned.