I've had this problem before, a couple of years ago. After reinstalling Windows (yawn) everything was alright. But I want to avoid doing that again.

Anyway here's the problem: If I open a folder with an mpeg4 or Divx/Xvid file in it, Windows Explorer locks up even without opening the file! If I am quick and double click, the file will play normally but the message "Explorer is not responding" appears and the desktop vanishes. Control-alt-delete shows that 70 to 100% of system resources are being used, but the video plays fine.

I seem to remember reading something about this that said Explorer was trying to read every frame of the file which accounted for the huge CPU load, but what is the solution? I've tried downloading new Dixv drivers, tried both Media Player 9 and 10 (can't download 11 becasue Microsoft says my XP is not legit, even though it is).

I could try a system restore but I'd really like to know what happened. Any ideas?

I'm running XP SP2 on a Dual Xeon 3GHz, Asus NCCH-DL with 2GB ram, Matrox RT.X100 and 512MB 7800GS AGP.

Thanks in advance,

Ian