something musical is freezing my computer

I've had this problem since I've had Mandrake, and have tried many times to fix it, unsuccessfully. Here's the problem:
On rare and seemingly random occasions, a media player (xmms and mpg123 so far) will freeze my system while loading a song. It only happens when the player is between songs, and when it freezes everything stops responding, and I have to hit the reset switch.
Sometimes it won't happen for days, and sometimes it will be a couple hours between reboots.
I've tried the following:
compiling the latest version of xmms, using mpg123 and un/reinstalling xmms

Any thoughts?

specs:
XP1600+ @ 1.4, 8KHA+ w/ 256 MB RAM using onboard sound (AC97)
GeF2MX
Mandrake 8.1

I can confirm that the same thing happens with ogg123.
I'm going to see if using /dev/null as the output keeps it from freezing, but I'm just shooting in the dark.

edit: I was a little sleepy when I posted this. I haven't had this problem with ogg123, but I did have it freeze while using /dev/null as the output device with mpg123.