What instructions have you given the drive to perform in autoplay of properties, upon insertion of blank cd?
There could be a conflict of software, if autoplay has been instructed to perform an action other than the software you are attempting to burn with.
If you haven't already done this, I suggest choosing take no action as the default, to see if this cures your problem.
I may be off base, but I don't believe that information about blank disks will appear in AnyDVDs information box, as both of my systems, with 4 different drives, exhibit the same "no disk present", that you have described, and I cannot remember it being any different with previous versions of AnyDVD.
In fact, windows doesn't give any details about the disk, other than file system raw.
I don't know if it is meaningful, but I have also observed that:
1: Inserting a +R disk while watching the icon for the drive in my computer results in the drive description changing to cd drive.
2: Inserting a -R disk results in the same drive description change, but in addition, the icon changes from a drive with a disk atop it, to a disk with dvd -r underneath.
This I presume to be due to differences of data present on the 2 formats.
If someone else can provide an explanation of this, I would like your input.