Just thought of something else that I should have caught...long day at work and too little coffee, I guess? Your burner may be in PIO mode. I've seen this happen a few times with updates/upgrades...it would explain the poor/lack of progress. Check to see that you are in DMA or ultra DMA mode, definitely not PIO. Assuming your hard drives are IDE (EIDE), your burner should be on the secondary IDE controller...navigate via the device manager. Again, if you need help, just ask.

Does your burner work properly outside the fab application?
Is your firmware up to date?