If your burner came with EZCD 5 the updates are integrated. Updating EZCD 5 and the patch also update DirectCD, which is what you seem to be trying to use.
You can record to CDR or RW using the XP resident program or EZCD. If the resident XP burning program isnt recognizing RW blanks you might have a burner problem. Try a different brand of blanks before you return it.
If you want to use the burner as a big floppy where you drag/paste to the drive in Windows Explorer you need DirectCD which should have loaded when you installed EZCD. It is packet writing software. It is an easy way to record if the data is not very important to you. If it is you will be back asking how to recover the important data you lost. DirectCD 5 at least has a recovery/explorer applet that helps you recover the data you will eventually lose. I keep seeing posts by people who cant get DirectCD 5 to work with XP. You might have to wait for another patch.
The only drivers needed by a burner are loaded by Windows. They allow the burner to be used as a CD-ROM. The recording software is all you need otherwise. There are patches and updates, but no additional drivers. If you want to check out the burner, download the free 30 day trial of the latest Nero it will do both mastering and packet writing to XP.
http://www.nero.com/en/download.htm