playing divx movies causes system to hang, grrr!!!

I had been watching divx movies for an hour or so (never watched them on the computer before), then one time my computer just froze during playback. At first I thought this might be a divx player problem, and I turned down the post-processing feature. Still froze. So then I decided to try a different player. So I use windows media player, which uses less cpu, but it still freezes. I am using the newest version of divx pro, and xp sp2. Now (as my raid 1 is rebuilding itself from the unexpected reboot) I am going to uninstall Divx and maybe try VLC, or an older version of the divx codec. Also I should mention that I run two instances of folding@home with bigpackets on. If after I get a new codec it does not work, I am going to see how it does without folding running.

Anyway please post any suggestions you have! and if you need extra information let me know!

okay just headed over to the divx site, it seems they have had compatibility issues with sp2 and are working on releasing a new version. hopefully that is my problem. Do I have any other options for decoding these videos? what are you guys using with xp sp2?

latest update: turns out the newest version is supposed to be totally compatible with xp sp2, I tried VLC and making sure both instances of faolding@home were not running and I still get the lockup just a few seconds into the movie. what a pain! why can't I make a computer without these problems!!!

even newer update: using xvid to decode right now, and the first few minutes went fine. Just for fun I tried playing it from the local drive my os was on instead of the other sata disk it was on. Both played for a few minutes with no problems. After the raid finishes rebuilding i am going to run scan disk and then watch some more. wish me luck!

somebody save me!

hangs with xvid, too. I am out of ideas.

update: curses! I have the same problems playing dvd movies!

display driver problem, maybe?

updated to latest display driver and i still have the issue

You may need to install a filter such as ffdshow or maybe the file is not really a DIVX. May want to try using XVID.

nope the movies that freeze are definitely decoded with divx and i haven't had problems on other computers. plus the same issue happens playing dvds in windvd. thanks for the help, though! any other ideas?

they just sent me a piece of software called the "bigfix" and it has lots of utilities to fix divx, and decoder related problems: http://support.divx.com/cgi-bin/divx.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=337

I ran it and i'm testing wth a DVD right now. I'll post if it fixed it or if they have other advice. Other than that I am going to see if sp2 was the prob and format.

darn it! sp2 wasn't the problem. I did a fresh install of sp1 with no updates and I still had the problem! However I went back to an old image of my sp2 image and now I am running the computer connected to a CRT running at the same resolution but lower refresh rate than the LCD (lower on the LCD made images fuzzy at certain areas of the screen). So far so good. what could have caused this? does a higher refresh strain a vid card more?