When I navigate through my folders (meaning, for example, I'll open My Computer > J Drive > Misc > Media > Videos) I'll usually get the message saying Explorer.exe has screwed up and I can send an error if I want. I have no idea what this is about. Also, my media players pull a lot of memory after being closed. I thought this was just a flaw in the new WMP until I tried Winamp and found the same thing happened. It just uses more and more memory, despite being closed, until I have to terminate it from the processes window. I don't know what to attribute this to, either. Any help is very much appreciated. Still running XP, by the way. No Vista.
XP has a media file bug relating to videos that MS has never fixed. This issue causes Explorer to hang or crash. And yeah, it can cause other programs trying to read media files to use up a ton of memory. One thing that I've used to get around this, besides this cure, is to set the video folders to use "Tiles" view, and not "Thumbnails". In the folder's properties, Customize tab, you can select a different option from the pull down menu instead of the default "Videos".