Matshita dvd-ram uj850s problem

i have an acer aspire 5100 with a built in matshita dvd-ram uj850s. until a day or two ago, i was able to burn cds without a problem. i tried to get some files off a cd i had burned a while back, and the drive behaved as though it were a blank cd. none of the files on it showed up. so i then got a real blank cd and tried to burn a song on it, to see if the problem extended that far. it started to work but then gave me an "illegal error" and ejected the disk. i tried again with another disk, at a lower speed, and it gave me a media error. telling me to clean the disk or find a new one. i did so, and had the same problem.

this is a huge problem for me because i do not have a working soundcard and burning cds is the only way i can listen to music. i also need to be able to save files often.

any help would be more than appreciated. thanks.