Can only burn cd's in Itunes?

I have been having problems with my comp as far as my DVD burner only shows to be read by Itunes. I thought I couldn't burn anything, because when I put a blank disc in, none of my burning programs will even show I have a cd-rom on my laptop! Now I finally tried to burn a music disc in itunes and that DID work. Any ideas on what I could tinker with to make my laptop let me burn discs in my other programs instead of JUST Itunes?! Thanks for any help!

 

Make sure you have iTunes and any other burning or media related program closed before you open your CD/DVD burning software. It's possible that a program that reads disc drives will block access for other programs, in order to prevent autorun conflicts. Check the preferences for the program you want to burn to make sure that the DVD drive is recognized as a device by it. Try rebooting as well, making sure that itunes and any other media related program is not initiated by your startup programs. Also make sure there are no driver conflicts for your DVD drive in device manager if you are using Windows.

After doing all of this, place the blank DVD in your drive and start the desired burning program of your choice, and then close the drive, so that this program will be the only to read it upon insertion.