Hey thanks, Christopher. Using the OS' built-in burning feature was indeed my first suggestion in order to try to distinguish the issue between hardware and software, - and will be the missus' next step. They haven't run Disk Utility in over a month, (the following step...) and the problem just occurred more recently, so that'll be interesting to see if repairing permissions and/or the disk may solve it. I'm still trying to instill the proper regimen of disk maintenance, especially on a machine I don't have access to regularly. It's one thing to be the IT guy at home for the family, but once it's out of my "zip code" so to speak, others have to learn to be responsible... :