Help with my homebuilt system! weird problem!

whenever i try to watch or stream any type of video on my computer, the media program will jump to 100% cpu usage and my system will bogg horribly. i have to open task manager and do my best to close it down (which takes forever) or just restart my computer. i'd like to avoid reformating. my friend bought the same mobo at the same time as me and his works fine. my specs are:

amd athlon 64 3500+ clawhammer
1.0gb ram pc3200 ddr400
40gb hitachi 7200rpm
machspeed motherboard.
nvidia geforce 6600LE.

please help me try and figure out what the problem is. it's really inhibiting my system.

What "media program" are you using?

Have you tried multiple programs for watching a vdeo? WMP, iTunes, WinDVD, Winamp, etc.

Hvae you updated to the latest drivers from www.nvidia.com for your video card?

krfan1

i tried using wmp 11 beta when i firsted got my system built and it acted weird so i was like "i;'m just going to have to use a different program" but it did the same thing with wmp 10, some crappy video viewer, and another program that someone said worked when they had this problem but that didn't.

i'm using the mobo driver my motherboard came with, and i tried using the newest nvidia driver but that didn't work so i switched over to the one that the disc had.

could it be a hardware problem, or is it most likely just some driver screw-up?

What temp is the CPU?

the tempurature of my cpu stays at a cold 20 C idle. sometimes underload itll go to 30.

i'll give the mass-driver change thing a try and see if that works.