If you upgraded from ME to XP then you should make sure the drivers for
the CD/DVD are xp compatible.   If you have a Dell laptop, they should
provide the drivers for XP that fit your PC for that CD Drive.
Microsoft only offers generic drivers.  Roxio might have a generic
driver but its not their drive either.   So Dell is your best bet.  Not
sure where Samsung got into this unless its a Samsung drive.

Can you read CD's on the unit?  If so then it probably works.
You might want to remove Roxio and reinstall it if you have it on your
OEM discs that came with the system.   I caution that whatever was given
to you was ME compatible and of course may not be XP compatible.
But I've used older versions of Roxio before and they all seem to work.
If all else fails, download a freeware version of a CD burner software.
http://cdburnerxp.se/

If all this fails, then give more detail about your hardware and what
you have done.   The only item I know is you have XP and Roxio.   I
really don't know what PC or make or model, xp version, SP level etc you
have, and details like that can help anyone reading these messages.   Be
factual.  Don't need 10 pages, but more info is better than less.

Good luck.

Ignore the Laptop comment.   Change each 'laptop' to 'PC'.

If the CD is not working, does it show in Device Manager or do you have
any devices in Device Manager with the yellow ! mark?

The CD-RW drive may be okay, it could just be the software.
The Roxio CD burning software supplied with 98 or ME does not work on XP without a lot of patches.
The Roxio XP version supplied by Dell does not always even reinstall in XP after some Windows
Upgrades.
You may have to buy a newer version of Roxio (now Sonic) or just use the XP burning tool.
(You could also buy another brand of CD burning software.)

XP will burn to a CD-RW drive without any special software.  However, it is a bit clumsy.
To use the XP burning software either.
1.  In Windows Explorer, drag the files you want on a CD over and drop them on your CD-RW drive
icon.  Or
2.  Right-click on the files you want on the CD and use the "send-to" option to send them to your
CD-RW drive.

In either case then when you click on the CD-RW drive it will have files waiting to be burned.
(If when you open the CD-RW drive you see your drives shown on the left, click on the "Folder" icon
in the tool bar.  This with give you tool options on the left side of the page.  There you will
clearly see the "Burn these files to the Disk" option.)

Note the XP burning software does not tell you how much of the disk capacity you have used with
these files.  If you picked too many files it will come back (after starting the burn setup) and
tell you that you have too many files, but it wont tell you how much to remove.  It becomes a sort
of trial and error processes.

Note:  The XP burning software will not do DVDs.