Hi Randy (thats an excellent online name)
I hope I'm not too pedantic, but this issue has been covered in
so many posts by Papa/Wojo/Craig/JohnInz/eeyore, et al
(apoligies to anyone I forgot to mention)
But it is simply a format compatibilty issue.
WMM is *freeware*, MS have bundled an easy, effective, fun,
but very basic movie editing package.
There are software houses whose whole future depends on
nobody else undercutting them. And MS is sensitive to this. So...
WMM is exceedingly "fussy" about what type of source file format
it is compatible with, and basically it is only happy with WMV or DVI
formats. Search out Wojo's post's to learn of his experiance of
what type of Mpeg wmm is or isn't happy with.
Mpeg1 is consistant, as is WMV, and DVI, but Mpeg2 is codec
dependent (and very inconsistant!). Apart from propriatary
formats such as the likes of Quicktime(yuk) and Realmedia,-
Mpeg2 causes WMM the most problems.
This is the most likely cause of your PC freezing - a tricky Mpeg2!
The easiest, and the most effective solution is to convert the
problematic Mpeg's into either WMV or DVI prior to importing
into WMM.
This link is to
www.download.com
This is an excellent site for software of all types. (apart from
telepathy)
This specific link is to the page that details ALL mpeg conversion
software, please note, this is "all licenses", so to discern Freeware
use the update option at bottom of page:
http://tinyurl.com/fydlm
PS. Be patient, and many posters will supply you with details
of their preferred conversion software.
Also note, you may well have already preinstalled such
conversion software?