Problems with practically everything!

Hello,

About three months ago I bought a sony digital camera. Until now I haven't managed to burn to a dvd any of the dv 20 tapes I recorded. I never thought that transferring a recorded tape to a dvd could be so hard. I encountered one million problems on the way and still cannot find a solution -bought a bigger hard disc, an external graphic card, firewire cable (came with dvd authoring software that would crash the system). Installed three different programs to capture/edit/burn -and unistalled them one by one due to pc performance problems. The worst of them was Picture Package that came with my camera.
In the end I formatted my hrd disc, installed all drivers, supporting software and antivirus from the beginning and I still encounter problems. My program of choice was Roxio Easy Media (was advised to install antivirus AFTER I install this one) and still cannot burn any dvd. At some point blank cds were not seen in my system -fixed it by changing settings in drag-to-disc. So now it sees the disc but doesn't write. I have plenty of errors jumping out, Roxio closes by itself, one recorded dvd (the only one I managed to burn) has an awful quality, stops, jumps, squares all over... I read it may be the roxio driver. I am hopeless here. Please help me -what should I do? Uninstall roxio with Roxio Zap? Uninstall Nero? Deactivate Norton? Delete Roxio driver? Uninstall IE 7? (I don't even know how to do it)Choose another stable software (Adobe Premiere?) Change cables? Change dvd writer? Change somehow the speed of writing (there is no such option in EasyDVD of Roxio)? Uninstall somehow drag-to-disc? All these possibilities I found on different forums...What is the best solution?

I am not at home now so cannot give you all my system's details.
All I remember is that it's Pentium 4, Windows XP Professional, 400 something RAM, HD 160 GB, DVD Writer DRW IDE 16x (dual layer, upgraded firmware). Sofware installed Roxio Easy Media (I think v8), Norton Internet Security 2002, Nero (not working -expired, I think v6), DirectX 9... can't think of anything else. I am not a professional, and have to do professional stuff, so please bare with me.
Thanks beforehand.

OOsh