Thanks Jim. I turned off anti-virus, but I also did something I hadn't tried before, which I suspect is what actually solved the problem. I had previously highlight the playlist above and it appeared in the large part of the MC window at right. Because I saw Demo PlayIist 1 in the action window, I had then clicked on Burn both in the action window and one other place (possibly the menu icon at upper left of action window, which I can't see now during the burn process). This time I had the intuition to also drag and drop Demo PlayIist 1 from the Playlist list above the action window. This step is what actually allowed the burn to begin. While I saw this as step 5 in the CD burning wiki article, I didn't do it because the action window already said Demo Playlist 1, which to me meant that the files were already there. It seems counter-intuitive to me to have the Playlist name there before the files are there.