windows media player 11 suddenly stops creating audio or mp3 cd's

can someone help me maybe?
about a few weeks ago for no reason windows media player 11 on vista stopped
creating audio cd's

it was burning things fine whether or not they were wma or mp3... whether
they were DRM or not was never something i thought of.

then that all stopped and now some things burn and others do not
i have tried lowering the burn speed from fastest to fast to medium and
still no go.

any one have any ideas why this happens?

oddly enough windows reports in explorer that the discs i insert are blank,
but windows media player sees the files on the cd.

they do not play either way on my xbox, car stereo etc.
niether audio cd or data cd.

help!