Vista Ultimate - DELL Precision M65 - problem burning CD on NEC ND-6650A

When clean installing Vista after Win/XP SP2, you lose all the Dell
installed applications. This is the reason, I recommend now, not to switch
to Vista now since you lose e.g. Roxio and cannot burn a data DVD or CD. Or
you lose your WAVE fingerprint reader function. You end up with a crippled
expensive workstation - 6 months old.

The system is a Dell Precision M65 with Vista Ultimate.Installed all the M65
vista drivers available on the Dell web site including the driver (only
firmware) for the NEC DVD/CD drive.

The problem:
Vista has its own DVD/CD burn function. When you insert a blank CD, Vista
will pop-up a window "Burn a disc", where you can enter the disc title,
default it is the date like "Feb 28 2007" and you can select a formatting
option: Live File System or Mastered. Select Mastered and then click Next.
You will get a blank Windows Explorer like window on which you can drop the
data files to be burned.When you drop a file the window remains blank and no
data is written on the disc.
Tried with a Copy/Paste a file or Send to DVD - no luck.

Appreciate a suggestion to burn a CD with Vista or do I need to buy Roxio
Creator 9 or Nero?
-Eric