Vista - All video players freezing in Vista Ultimate 64

First I would like to thank everyone in this forum - I recently upgraded to Vista 64 and have gotten a lot of help from some of the threads here. This problem though I haven't been able to find a solution for anywhere.

Basically, whenever I play an avi file the video player will freeze up within 5-10 minutes of playback. It's not always the same time, and sometimes it makes it a half hour or so before freezing. It doesn't freeze up the whole system, just the video player. Also, if I let it go and don't do anything, it will eventually resume playback, but jump forward about 2 or 3 minutes into the video.

I've tried Media Player, VLC, Nero Showtime, Winamp, and Divx Player so far, all with the same results. I also tried installing the Vista Codec Pack 5.09 and x64 Components 1.63 (both individually and together) and still nothing different. I've also upgraded my video drivers to the latest version (nVidia 181.20) and rolled back to 180.84 to test those. Nada.

Here's my rig:

nForce 680i LT mobo
Q6700 @ 2.66
Geforce 8600 GTS 512mb
Ultra 600 watt PSU
Vista Ultimate x64 SP 1

I don't really think it's a hardware issue - I took my video card and my harddrive from my old PC and never had a problem like this. Also, I'm not getting any issues like this with any other applications or games. Streaming video, from hulu, justin . tv, etc., works perfectly fine, this issue seems limited to .avi files encoded with Divx stored on my computer.

This is really driving me crazy, so if anyone could help I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

I too am at wits end with a nearly identical problem. I have gone so far as replacing the MOBO, CPU, memory, videocard, larger power supply and reinstalled Vista Ultimate X64. The only thing that still exists from the first setup that gave me headaches are the 2 SATA II drives. I know the original post was made some time ago, but I'm hoping that either someone has some clues/sollutions/anything.

I guess the only thing I did not see in the original post was the status of the HDD activity. On my system the HDD activity light stays light 100% until things stabilize and I can get system response.

Current setup:
Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H, AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.6Ghz AM3 CPU, OCZ Vista Performace Ed. 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz, 1.5 TB SATA II HDD, 80 GB SATA II HDD, 450 WATT Thermallake PS.