Computer freezes/crashing while playing video

I'm not sure whether this is a hardware problem, or a software problem, but I'm trying to find out if anyones had a similar problem. My computer atm isnt overclocked or anything, and is perfectly stable except when playing videos. The problem only seems to happen when i try to play back any type of video from the hard drive, doesnt matter from which drive or even which player or even editor that i use. when the computer freezes sometimes the screen freezes and the audio keeps playing. But most of the time the play back stutters a bit, the screen goes black, and the computer freezes. I have a feeling it may be the IDE controller on my MB...but if thats the case, wouldnt my computer be unstable in general, and not just with videos?

anyways...so lemme know if any of you guys know about this problem, because im pretty stumped right now.

how about when playing games? Does it happen to every type of video (ie. DVD, mpg, avi, mov)? If not, then is it just certain video format? If so, have you updated the latest codec? How about audio drivers? I've had my computer crashed before because of the audio drivers.

Doubt, it's the IDE controller because yes, if that is the problem, you'll see the problem cropping up at anytime.

yes, its any type of video. the odd thing is that i have another OS thats barebones (just for watching movies on big screen) and that OS doesnt have a problem playing videos. im going to update my video driver and see if that fixes anything.

Got a DVD player installed, and does it freeze when using DVDs, or is it only with videos on the HD?

I have a similar problem and I believe it has something to do with Java Runtime environment. If I have Java app running or HAD run a Java app since last reboot, media player will freeze when I try to play a mpg file.