My pc freezes when I play media files

Hello there!,
First of all, my apologies if this is posted in the wrong forum.

I have been having a very frustrating problem with my pc ...it freezes almost every time I run a wmv file ,whether its a file I've downloaded or streaming,and it doesnt matter which media player I use( WMP, MPC and VLC) ,Although when using vlc player , it doesnt freeze right away like when using the other 2 players(WMP and MPC),but it will freeze eventually It also freezes most of the time I try to view a youtube video,and even when using some of the msn messenger features like the sending a nudge.This problem,however, doesn't occur when I play rm,mov or avi files.

I didn't have this problem before,but at some point this started to happen...I thought my pc could be infected with some virus or malware, so I formatted my pc,installed new win xp pro and downloaded motherboard drivers,directx 9.0c(full package) and VIA_HyperionPro_V513A ...And after all of that ,the same problem still exist

- this is a link for my motherboard http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...ProductID=1306

-And these are the drivers I downloaded : http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/M...ProductID=1306

Note* :I had a problem installing the audio driver( motherboard_driver_audio_realtek_whql.exe )..half way through installation progress, the pc shuts off and restarts by itself.

Help is appreciated and thanks in advance.

my pc info:
AMD Duron™ processor
1.31 GH , 992 MB of RAM

OS: Win xp pro sp3

 

Thank you very much for replying ,Halo.

- Yes , MP3 files too make my pc freeze ... tried it right now, and sure enough it did.
-I have the ffdshow pack installed, but I dont think that matters because ,after I formatted I tried to play a wmv file before installing the Divx codec and it froze.
- Nothing yellow in device manager ..All seem to be okay.
- I don't have any antivirus installed yet and using windows firewall.

- I have a GIGABYTE motherboard http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Default.aspx model : GA-7VKML

Thanks again Halo

 

Hello again,

I followed your instructions with regard to IDE/ATA Atapi Controllers .There are 3 controllers : Primary IDE channel , Secondary IDE channel and VIA Bus Master IDE controller.I uninstalled the first 2 as you suggested ,and when re-installed , the Secondary IDE controller's transfer mode was set on"pio only".I changed the "Transfer mode" manually to DMA but the " current transfer mode cannot be changed.This is getting really annoying, to say the least
I attached a snapshot so you can see what I'm talking about.

thanks again for your help.