Whenever video or DVD plays back, disk clicks twice and hangs

I have been using my 5-year old system for the past 10 months without any software and hardware changes. All of sudden, this real annoying symptom came up. Whenever video or DVD plays back full screen, after certain amount of time (3-60mins) disk will click twice and hang, and software player screen will freeze up. As such, I can only resort to manually power down then up to get the system up again. The above symptom seems to happen only when player plays back in full screen mode. I use primarily Media Player Classic and PowerDVD.

I investigated the issue and was unable to trace back or solve it. Despite the below efforts, the same symptom persists. I am having hard time to identify whether it is a hardware or software problem.

All the below efforts didn't avail:
- Replaced the OS disk with a brand new Western Digital IDE disk
- Uninstalled and reinstalled hardware components: OS disk, video card and memory modules
- Checked Windows event log but nothing relevant
- Tried to play video files located on external drives and retail DVDs
- Tried the latest build of Media Player Classic 6.4.9.1

Can somebody give some hints/solutions? This is driving me nuts. Thanks!!!


The below are descriptions of my hardware and software configurations.