kyrene

As Andrew suggested, I updated AnyDVD to the latest version. Seems to be
stable now.

As far as Moviemaker goes: I provoked a crash & had it sent to Microsoft as
zachd suggested, to get the bucket number. It turns out I did not even need
that, as the reply said that the problem was caused by PowerDVD being on the
system. Yes, I had installed an old version of that early on (though I never
used it, as installation complained about incompatibility, but neglected to
uninstall it.) I didn't realize that it could mess things up merely by being
there. I uninstalled it, which removed/unregistered some 8 or 10 files like
clline21.ax, clvsd.ax, clnavx.ax, etc. which I presume are filters/codecs
that moviemaker can't deal with. After that, moviemaker seems completely
stable and no longer crashes!
Some of the other video apps I had installed still hang in certain
circumstances, but as long as I have one stable video editor, I'm happy.
(Moviemaker is simple and does everything I need, video, audio, deals with
wmv and VOB files, has a timeline + storyboard, plus it's free.)
I underestimated the usefulness of MS problem reporting.
Many thanks for all the help. I'll do more testing, but it appears that the
problem is solved.
I'm more conscious/wary of codecs now.
Kyrene