Computer techies: My video playback hangs my system

[brentspeak]

Trying to play back mpegs using all kinds of programs - Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Nero Showtime - hangs my system to the point where I have to power off/on to get my computer running again. Also, when I try to edit videos using Nero or whatever, the same problem.

I don't know why this keeps happening, but this might be a clue: I reinstalled Windows XP last week from the Security Pack 2 CD, and the video playback was back to normal; but when I installed the updated SP2 from Microsoft, the problem returned.

Any ideas?

[BootinUp]

1. Well

SP2 is not really meant to be reinstalled.

But here are some suggestions:
1) test your hardware first. I like this tool: http://www.memtest86.com/

If your computer can run that battery of tests through 2 or 3 times, good indication you don't have a major hardware problem (motherboard, cpu, mem.) You should also run scandisk on your harddrives. Open properties on a harddrive, go to tools tab, select error check check now, click ok, reboot.

After these test show no serious problems, then you can check that your windows system files are intact. Click start->run, type in "sfc /scannow" without the quotes. This verifies all your system files. Should fix you up.

If you still have problems, I suspect some problem with your codecs. Let us know.

(edited)

[brentspeak]

2. I'll try it out, thanks