CDR drive locking up w/ Verbatim blank DVDs and freezing Vista

I have a Dell Studio XPS-1340. it's about a year and a half old. no major problems, except for issues with hibernation (I just put it to sleep or shutdown now; hibernating causes OS to freeze upon wakeup) and lagging during a low charge. aside from that, great laptop. now however..

I got some blank Verbatim DVD-Rs to burn some home movies from my laptop. I'm not very tech savvy but according to my Device Manager this is what my DVD/CD-ROM drive is:: HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GS20N SCSI

the 3 available BIOS updates for CD/DVD drives on the Dell site don't target/support the above drive. but the problem is odd: my first try, I put the blank DVD-R into the drive and the whole system froze. the trackpad, keyboard, and USB mouse didn't work. I had to hold down the power button to shut it down, and even then I had to hold it down longer than usual. upon wakeup the DVD/CD drive would start making all sorts of noise, the kind that signifies it's reading the disc; yet when I put it in initially it hardly made any noise prior to freezing. so after all this, I ejected the disc (couldn't do that earlier when everything froze) and tried it again for the hell of it. this time, it worked fine. my next DVD-R worked fine too. however my third did the same thing the first one did, freezing on the first try; after rebooting and ejecting the disc, I put it in again and it works fine.

this is really bugging me, I didn't think I'd have so much trouble just trying to insert a blank DVD-R, and have had many good words from friends and coworkers regarding Verbatim. ANY help a.s.a.p. would be appreciated. thanks.