You really shouldn't have to do anything physical...simply uninstall the ODD in device manager as I suggested. There are 2 links in my sig that will help with this as well as the presumed DMA issue.

The burn logs are easy.
The default location is:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator Name\My Documents\DVDFab\Log

As Alan and I have both said, the drive itself is frequently a huge problem...again, no offense. They often are installed in laptops, esp. Toshiba. As suggested by Alan, try and stick with Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden media...hard to go wrong with either.
The burn log will give us some valuable info so we can start to nail down a solution for you.