That happened to me once as well. We found out that we were using some other speed when it was supposed to be 24x! We too went through a few brands. I don't know if they have this kind in Canada, but now we use Memorex CD-R with 700mb, 80 minutes, and up to 24x multi speed. Those work just fine for us.

BTW~ I use Nero, who knows if it's the same for a diff. burner.

Good luck trying to figure it out!

PS-My computer hates me too