I’ve been having really weird issues with my DVD burner in my Dell – sometimes I could burn a disc, other times I’d make coasters… after some searching I found out that the Dell drive is a rebranded Samsung drive.
Dell TSST TS-H653B to Samsung SH-S203B crossflash
If you have a TSSTcorp TS-H653B drive in your Dell, I highly recommend you do this crossflash to get your drive to perform properlly.