Ben,
Did any of the error messages give you an error code number? If you, could you post them back?
In addition to the ASPI driver, it appears that you may have additional problems with some of your hardware. The first course of action here, would be to start a process of elimination to see if we can pinpoint the cause(s.)
The first suspect would be your CD burner, fortunately, the Plextor website has an excellent diagnostic self-test that will help you determine if your problem is with your writer or somewhere else.
This test uses light signal to tell you if there is a problem with your burner AND the actual problem.
Here is the link, and as Plextor suggests, make sure you use quality media (MTU Silver Disks, Mitsui Silver, TDK) for this test. When you finish, please post back the results.
http://www.plextor.com/english/support/faqs/HW00003.htm
Good luck,
Jon