They're HP branded blanks, but I can't find the real mfg. printed anywhere on them.
It could be...
Brand almost always means absolutely nothing, especially with "major consumer brands" like HP, Sony, Maxell, etc. They buy their blanks on the open market and they can be different from one batch to the next. There can even be different manufacturers of discs within the same "pack" sold at retail.
There used to be sites that tracked all of this by batch numbers and whatnot, but they don't really exist anymore. If you burn a lot of discs, you learn to buy high-quality media. I really like the "Ultra" discs sold by DiscMakers. Verbatim also makes high-quality discs (though I've had better long-term luck with the Ultra discs).
That said... MC's burner should perform no better or worse than other similar audio-cd mastering applications on your system. Media rejection is a function of the burner hardware itself, generally not a software issue.
One thing to check for EVERYONE who is having trouble here... PIO Mode. If PIO Mode somehow got turned on for your optical drive, this will cause all sorts of seemingly random failures and slow performance. This can happen all by itself, especially in Windows XP. Windows will automatically slow a drive down to PIO transfer mode when a certain number of errors occur. These errors usually indicate a hardware failure, but they can also be other things, like bad cables, viruses, or flaky drivers.
These instructions are old, but they still work for XP:
http://www.onthegosoft.com/dma_setting_nt.htmHere are instructions for Vista (which also work for Win 7):
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Turn-Direct-Memory-Access-DMA-on-or-offIf this happened to your system, then you want to start looking for the cause of the failure, or it will probably happen again. Things I would try (roughly in order):
1. Replace the data cable that connects your burner to your motherboard. These are cheap and they fail ALL THE TIME, especially the old ATA-style ribbon cables. Just replace it. You should be able to find a replacement at Radio Shack or your local computer store. I've even had them give them to me if I asked nicely.
2. Update your motherboard chipset drivers to the latest version. If you have an Intel processor, this is most likely
these drivers here. It is possible that you could have an Nvidia-based board, but less likely. If you aren't sure,
CPU-Z will tell you what vendor made the chipset on your motherboard (check the "Mainboard" tab). It works best if you uninstall the old ones first, reboot, and then install the new ones.
3. Replace the drive. They're cheap. It might be worth swapping a new on in there to see if it fixes the issue. Change the cable at the same time if you didn't already do it. If it doesn't fix the issue, well, then you're only out $20.
4. Check for malware and disable your anti-virus auto-protection. AV Software can interfere with burning sometimes, and viruses/malware can CERTAINLY cause issues.
