CD burner (mashita) not recognized

I have a 2 year old Toshiba Satellite with a Mashita DVD/CD-RW burner. I can burn movies using DVD Decrypter/RipIt4Me, but that's about the only time I can burn anything. Even if I enable CD Recording (under Properties of the DVD-RAM), drag and drop won't work. Both Sonic and Roxio Easy CD Creator won't even recognize the drive, and therefore won't burn a thing! My laptop itself recognizes the drive, but the programs that do the actual burning, don't!

I tried updating the drivers and uninstalling the CD drive and the IDE controllers, but it didn't help. I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Any ideas?? Thanks much!