Have you tried with a different CD/DVD - or just using a CD instead of DVD, I ask cos a while back I was trying to burn a boot CD and it kept failing with a rather useless similar-ish message (cant remember exactly), however, once I found a different CD it worked perfectly fine so the original one I was attempting to burn got binned - admittedly the CD was pretty ancient (12x speed was fast at the time I got it )
Edit: you hadn't already burnt anything to that DVD had you? Given its only an R, rather then RW