I uninstalled all of the Sony programs that come with the drive but i'm still having issues. I might try to set up another user that has nothing running or just keep uninstalling programs until I figure out what it might be. The problem now is that I'm trying to pull off programs that don't sit in the background (roxio ez-cd creator, alcohol %120, etc).

Seems like it's several programs rather than a specific one that causes the issues. The other funny thing is that it wouldn't recognize my other, non-burning DVD drive.