OMG me too.
I am having the exact same problem and it started just recently too. Whenever I open a video or even a DVD, no matter what player, first the video itself hangs but the audio keeps playing, and then the entire system hangs. Even the mouse stops moving. The video player itself opens fine, it just when I got to play a video it hangs.
First I tried rolling back various drivers and windows media player to WM9 (I was using WM10) but that didnt work. Then I completely formatted my computer and reinstalled everything with the latest drivers and still had the problem. So then I reformated again but this time only installed the bare drivers that Windows XP didnt come with which were SP2, my nforce2 motherboard drivers, printer driver, and mouse driver.
At this point the videos played great. I then installed the latest video card drivers for my ATI AIW 9700pro including the WDM driver for TV capablitities. Once I did this the problem started happening again. I figured it was a problem with something new in the latest video card drivers so I used the ATI uninstall program and completely cleaned my system of those drivers. I then went to windows update and downloaded the ATI drivers that they had posted (which were over a year old). The driver did not include the WDM driver or control center software, it was simply the video driver itself. I then played some more videos and they still played great.
At this point I was sure that the latest ATI drivers were to blame. I continued using my computer and turned off automatic updates in order to keep the system exactly how it was so no new drivers would automaticly install.
However, today, about 3 days after I got everything working, it all started happening again. I have not installed anthing new except Age of Empires 3 and the video still worked after installing it. I do not know what the hell is going on now. I have scanned my system for viruses and I only use mozilla firefox so spyware is kept to a minimum. Also, all my games play fine. Here are my system specs.
Shuttle nforce2 motherboard
ATI AIW 9700pro
1 gig kingston hyperX ram
Windows XP home with SP2 (I was using professional before I reinstalled so it happens on either OS)
Onboard nforce sound
Firefox 1.5.1 (also tried opera 8.5 and firefox 1.07 with no luck)
Windows Media player 10 ( have also tried ATI video player and VLCwith no luck)
Logitech G5 mouse with latest Logitech setpoint software
Epson cx6400 printer with latest drivers
Activesync 4.0 for my Dell 51v PDA
Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 (required for ATI drivers, I also tried . NET 1.1 with no luck)
AVG 7.1 virus scanner
Mini-media keyboard software
The only progams that I hav loading at startup are:
NVmixertray (for sound card)
AVG
Epson printer driver
Logitech mouse driver
Mini-media keyoboard driver
I opened the application event viewer which shows this whenever the system hangs
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Hang
Event Category: (101)
Event ID: 1002
Date: 2/11/2006
Time: 1:46:02 PM
User: N/A
Computer: CORY
Description:
Hanging application wmplayer.exe, version 10.0.0.3646, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 48 61 6e 67 ion Hang
0010: 20 20 77 6d 70 6c 61 79 wmplay
0018: 65 72 2e 65 78 65 20 31 er.exe 1
0020: 30 2e 30 2e 30 2e 33 36 0.0.0.36
0028: 34 36 20 69 6e 20 68 75 46 in hu
0030: 6e 67 61 70 70 20 30 2e ngapp 0.
0038: 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 61 74 0.0.0 at
0040: 20 6f 66 66 73 65 74 20 offset
0048: 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 00000000
Clicking on additional information at microsoft yields nothing. Also, it is not just Windows media player that hangs. Its any video player, so I dont think this is a windows media player problem.
In the system event viewer it also shows this on bootup
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: ati2mtag
Event Category: WDM
Event ID: 1049
Date: 2/11/2006
Time: 1:29:59 PM
User: N/A
Computer: CORY
Description:
SRB command failed – SRB_GET_DEVICE_PROPERTY
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 01 00 5a 00 ......Z.
0008: 01 00 00 00 19 04 00 80 .......
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
I think that the ATI driver is trying to find the WDM driver which is not there because I did not reinstall it after reformatting my computer. As I said before, the videos were working just fine for the past 3 days that I didnt have WDM drivers installed so I dont think this is the problem.
If you have any ideas to try, please tell me. I hate having a freezing computer.