Vista - WMP11/MCE cause system freezes - getting frustrating!!!---HELP!!!!

Ok, I've poked around the web for 2 days now, and you guys seem like a knowledgeable place.

I recently upgrade my system,went to an AMD 770 chipset with an AMD X2 6400+ and 4GB of DDR1000 ram. With my new ram upgrade, I opted to install Vista x64

This hasn't been the most pleasant, first I find my Hauppauge TV card doesnt like more than 3.2GB of ram, ok, I can fix that, I'll use my USB tuner.

but then, and this is the part I can't solve. Watching live TV or recorded, after a while the whole system will lock up, no bsod, no reboot, no error....just freeze. Since it freezes in this manner, there are no error logs, no event logs...nothing. so I say screw it, I'll go back to watching normal TV...ick, but then I noticed playing music or video in WMP 11 causes the same results, at least in 32bit for sure, I left my PC back home running WMP 11 64bit playing music, if I get back and find it dead, then its WMP 11 in general.

My question is why, why does it freeze?

The only semblance of an error I found in the event logs were a few errors produced by l3codecx.ax, the mp3 under layer codec if I'm not mistaken. but that seems unlikely.

is there an updated codec I can try, or another update/patch I've missed

help is much appreciated, thanks in advance!

-IL

Ok, I think I may have found the problem, or it's two fold, I did the silly thing of changing two things at once, but I'm sure it wasn't my moving the sound card to a different PCI slot. I removed ReadyBoost, I was running a 2GB SD card in readyboost along with my 4GB of ram, I just kind of carried it over with me from Vista x86, and didn't think much of it at the time.

I let my PC run overnight playing music through Media Center, I woke up expecting a frozen box...but no! the music still played!

so, for anybody else with a similar problem, try disabling readyboost!


if the problem returns, I'll update.