When I start playing a new video or MP3 or skip to a time when playing them, my system hangs for a couple of seconds. A restart solves this problem, but only for a while. It does not matter which player I use (VLC, Media Player, Winamp, Zoom Player), which media files or if they are located on a network drive or on the local hard drive. Everything else works flawlessly and after the playing has started, there are not problems - until I switch to another file. 

Additionally, when the Winamp playlist continues to the next song, the system does not hang. When I skip to the next song manually, the system hangs.

I've been using Windows XP for years and consider myself a fairly professional windows user, but I have no idea what could cause this.

Dual-core 2Ghz, 2GB RAM, Windows XP SP3, Audigy card with kxproject. Worked flawlessly for years.

Would be glad if anyone could help.