well,i would add a bit more ram to the computer .like another 512meg at least ,have you tried to burn a music cd with some other form of burning software like Nero,

Uninstall the CD in Device manager and reboot.
It's possible the drive is dead.

DVD/CD-ROM drives: HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR 8162B and LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-812S do I uninstall both of these. When I reboot are they reinstalled? What would cause the drive to be dead?

YES
the Laser is the usual cause of a bad cdrom /dvd drive ,fails to read a cd/dvd

and get some more ram!!!

As computer freezes when burning CDs and not playing them or importing from them, are these solutions still relevant? Sorry if I appear! slow on the uptake but I know I'm not a technical wizard. I've just optimized the virtual memory on computer would this help? Computer does freeze 2/3 times a day whilst browsing also, but it's guaranteed to freeze when I try to burn a CD!

not necessarly you asked what makes a cdrom bad ,i answered ,
as to the freezing of the computer you have other issues ,not likely caused by the cdrom if it freezes for or five times a day it could be a bad stick of ram ,bad harddrive ,bad motherboard ,bad cpu ,bad power supply ,bad video card ,corrupt windows ,should i keep going !!!
start with ram ,if you have a computer with a burner that works ,download memtest86 program .and create a bootable cd,boot computer to it and check the ram .

Yes. Uninstall both. They will be reinstalled when you reboot.
I think this is the place to start,as a bad laser would just fail to burn or read, not crash your computer.
Open Control Panel/Admin Tools/Event Viewer and look for red marks under System and Applications for clues to your other problems.
You seem to have many problems, and we need to figure out the cause to advise you.

Have checked Application Log and System Log - system log shows quite a few errors - majority of them as follows:-
Source: Service Control Manager
1. Description: Security Centre Service terminated with the following error %%16389
2. Description: Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for a transaction response from the ws(or z?)csvc service
3. Description: The IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service failed to start due to the following error:- The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion
4. Description: Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the IMAPI CD-Burning COM service to connect
5. Description: The Application Layer Gateway Service service failed to start due to the following error:- Service did not respond to start or control request in a timely fashion.

Source: DCOM
1. Description: The server (0002DF01-0000-0000-C000-000000000046) did not register with DCOM within required timeout
2. Description: DCOM got error "Service did not respond to start or control request in timely fasion" attempting to start service iPod Service with arguments " " in order to run server.

The Application Log showed errors as:-
Source: Ci, Category CI Service, couldn't get any more information about this error as
when scrolling down looking for other errors all events in the application log disappeared and it was empty. I then got a message saying the Event Log file was corrupt (or was it Application Log? sorry I've read that much info I'm suffering from overload). It may have been corrupt Application Log as this then showed a red cross over it. This has happened in the past and it does eventually repopulate.

Error messages do give a link to Microsoft but I've found the information very technical, or non-existent.

I do seem to have many problems on this computer!

time for a format and reload ,best option in my opinionated ,opinion