Windows 7 freezes / hangs when playing video or audio on any media player

Question

I've had this issue since installing Windows 7 (32 bit) over 2 months ago and have been actively seeking a fix for the majority of those two months. In windows XP pro (32 bit), I had no issues whatsoever. The problem manifests itself as a complete hang of all system functions and inability to interact with my computer aside from moving the pointer around.
This only occurs when I am playing some sort of media (mp3, avi, mp4, mkv, etc) on any media player that I had installed at the current time of testing (WMP12, VLC, Realplayer). The initial response is a hang of the system which then can become a freeze if I click around too much during the hang. After approximately 3-5 minutes the problem is alleviated and the system plays catchup with the video/audio sync.
Below is a complete rundown on my system and fixes floating from other threads that I have attempted.
My System Spec:
Windows: Windows 7 Ultimate (32 Bit) Version 6.1 Build 7600
Motherboard: Gigabyte Ds4-X48 Crossfire Ready
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256Bit DDR5
CPU: E8500 Wolfdale (3.16) Core2Duo
Ram: 4GB ( 2x 2GB OCZ Reapers @ PC8500 1066MHZ )
PSU: 600W OCZ GameXStream
HDD - Primary - 1.5TB Seagate
HDD - STORAGE - 1.5TB Seagate + 500GB Western Digital
Audio - Integrated Realtek
Drive Bays: SATA Combo Drive (Samsung) + IDE Lightscribe DVD-MultiRecorder RW
As you can see, my system is more than capable of running Windows 7 and probably just as qualified to captain a space shuttle.
Things I have tried to no avail
- Changing the Power Plan
- Adjusting the overclock of my GPU to factory defaults
- disabling Media Player Network Sharing in services.msc
- Only having WMP12 installed
- Shark007 Codec Pack
-Not having Shark007 Codec Pack
- Undergrading WMP12 to WMP11
- CLEAN BOOT - Freezes/hangs still occured regardless.
- Registry optimization and cleaning
- Playing video after fresh install still causes freezes
- SQMClient/MachineThrottling IS NOT THERE TO BE DISABLED OR DELETED
- Adjusting RAM timing,frequency and voltage in BIOS
- Use Display driver provided by Windows Update for ATI Radeon HD 4870
- Tested several other Catalyst and Display drivers
- Updated Chipset , Audio Driver, Network Driver
- Clean installed 4+ times ( I clean installed inbetween all of the previous attempts listed above)
- Uninstalling programs such as AIM, MSN Messenger, Adobe products, Daemon Tools Lite, Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX
-My computer is not eligible for the Intel Matrix Storage update
-Disabling aero
I am now starting to suspect maybe Company of Heroes may be an issue as it is Divx endorsed.
I froze once while typing this up due to wmp12 playing a mp4 music video in the background.
Can anyone recommend a good skin and theme that will make Windows XP look like 7? I'm starting to think that it's my only solution.

Answer 1

Hi,
Thank you for your posting.
As for this system freezing issue, we generally need to analyze the performance monitor logs and memory dump files to locate the root cause. Unfortunately, debugging is beyond what we can do in the forum because of the nature of forum support. A support call to our product service team is needed for the debugging service. I'd like to recommend that you contact Microsoft Customer Support Service (CSS) for assistance so that this problem can be resolved efficiently. To obtain the phone numbers for specific technology request please take a look at the web site listed below:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;PHONENUMBERS
If you are outside the US please see http://support.microsoft.com for regional support phone numbers.
Having said that, I'd still like to provide the following general troubleshooting steps to see if we can eliminate this problem:
Note: Please perform a complete system backup first. If any unexpected issue occurs, we can quickly restore the system to the current status.
1.    Scan your system to make sure that the system is virus free. Temporarily disable your anti-virus software to see if this problem is gone.
2.    If you have recently installed any software, hardware or drivers, please remove them.
3.    Run Process Explorer to check which processes are using a lot of memories or cause high CPU utilization:
Process Explorer
4.    If the process is a service, you can use these steps to find out what applications are using most of the CPU: Open Task Manager, click on the Processes tab, look for the process that is using the CPU and note its PID (Process ID). Note that you may need to go to the View/Select Columns menu and make sure that PID (Process Identifier) is checked.
Once you have the PID run the following from a command prompt:
tasklist /svc
This should give you the application associated with the PID you identified in the previous step.
However, if the issue still persists, please contact Microsoft Customer Support Service (CSS) for further troubleshooting. I hope the problem will be resolved soon. Thanks!
Nicholas Li - MSFT