Vista - Windows DVD maker weirdness HELP

Hello there...

I have a Dell 530 I picked up in September of this year and have just started playing with Windows DVD maker.

I'm having a few problems.

I am trying to burn .avi files (movies) to dvd and DVD maker will not consistently work. I can start the program 5 times and each time I add the file to burn, it will shut down. Then if I try again it will actually accept the file and start the loooooong process of encoding (currently been encoding for 1 hour and is at 35.5%).

Any ideas on why it is selecting when and when not to work? My internet searches have shown that Windows DVD maker is rather slow anyway...any suggestions of what other program might work better/faster?

Remember...simple is better! I'm not a big techno geek (although my respect for them is without bounds).