Archiving recovery points: Ghost 14 & Windows XP SP3

Can't get "Copy Recovery Point" to a DVD to work. I've defragged all disks, changed the compression setting to "high", downloaded and installed GEAR (whatever that does), all according to the error messages and some hints on this board. Currently the program starts and goes on for a varying period of time (max 13%), the system window for the DVD drive opens and Ghost quits. My understanding is that it looses its connection to the drive for some reason.

 

The backups to either local disks or an USB external drive work beautifully, with Ghost slicing them neatly to sizes which will fit a DVD. I've tried copying those to DVDs using CDBurnerXP, but can't get Ghost to open them. Is it possible to bypass Norton and archive working copies of recovery points using third party software? TIA. AHF