CD burns successfully but cd is blank

Hi peeps. I have a normal cd writer and a cd / dvd writer. Both worked fine until recently. Now, they will both play any type of media on pre recorded discs, and music I have stored on my hard drive, without issue. The problem being no matter what software I use they will not record / burn anything. The programs report burning was completed successfully but they will not play. When I open the burned disc in my computer all the tracks are listed and named correctly but the properties of every track says they are only 44 bytes as if they are merely a shortcut. If I try to drag and drop them to the disc it says the drives are inaccessible. "incorrect operation" I suspect this is actually a malware / bug / virus or something as it started after I downloaded a few tracks from Vuse. I found out after trying to burn one album in particular. I downloaded it again on my laptop thinking it was just a bad download but now the laptop has the same problem. Of course I have deleted the file but the problem remains.......:cry

Any thoughts most welcome. Thanks Mike.