Cant burn CD's or DVD's?

I have a T42 IBM think pad. It has a dvd and cd combo and the problem is i cant burn to any empty discs. The computer wont recgonize the disk as being empy at all. I am able to use music cd’s and dvds fine but i cant use empty ones or rewritable ones. I need to make a recovery disk for my other computer and boot it up, which is why I need this burner to work.