Need help with Copying CDs with my PC

I will try to help but it sounds like there are too many unknowns as to what the problem might be. You can try a few of the things listed below which may help to define what the problem is, or at least what direction to look:
1. Download and install EAC http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ It’s free ripping software and is pretty much accepted as the only tool to use in terms of getting digital music files from a PC to your hard drive. The interface is a little, well more complicated than i-tunes but as a piece of software there is no better.
2. If you care less about sound quality try installing itunes. It does a good job and the interface is fantastic. It will install itself, recognize your CD-R and the appropriate drives for the CD-R. Try ripping a CD using i-tunes. If you get the same result that you were having with Roxio then at least we know it is not the ripping software. If you are still having a problem (see 3)
3. Go to the windows control panel and click on Add/Remove hardware. Scroll down until you find your CD-R. You can have windows re-install the drive or add the drive manually using the disc that came with your dell.
4. If this doesn’t work call Dell.

Good luck. If all this works out I really recommend you looking into EAC to rip your CD’s to your hard drive and either be sure that the audio files are being kept in their native WAV format or are compressed using lossless compression codecs like FLAC. Ripping from CD to hardrive, compressing to MP3 (which is probably what Roxio was set up to do) and then re-copying to CD, would be like going from Vinyl to 4 track and then to CD

Extra action

You're way over my head. My dell pc came with Roxie CD creator and it always sounded fine. Since the new hard drive, the dics don;t play right thru the CD Rom drive, almost like the belt is slipping. I recorded a song to the hard drive today and when I played it back through the PC before recording it to the CD-R it played fine but sounded like static or tape hiss.

All I do it click the speed to record, highlight the song to record and hit the record button to get the song recorded on the hard drive.

What else should I be doing or email me your telephone number and best time to call tonight and I will ring you up.

Thanks

A few questions first:
1. What ripping software are you using? If you are not using EAC whay not?
2. Are you encoding the files to either lossy or lossless compression? If so what compression format, FLAC, MP3 etc?
3. Did you relaod all of the above software?
4. Did you reload drivers for your sound card and CD ddrive. Some ripping / encoding software processes through the soundcard (not quite sure why) so a drive problem could result in bad output?