WMP 9 Stops Responding and Causes Windows XP to Stop Responding Also

Recently when I tried to copy music to my hard drive from
an audio CD that I purchased, I noticed that WMP
completed 99% of the fourth song, but then stayed there
for quite some time. Being impatient, I first tried
cancelling the copy process, then to no avail, tried
exiting WMP first by clicking the X, then by attempting
to open Task Manager. When Task Manager did not open, I
realized that Windows had stop responding, and so I shut
down my computer manually.

Upon the restart, I once again tried to copy the music to
my hard drive, again starting with the first song, just
to make sure the cd was copied completely. This time,
Windows stopped responding as before during the first
song's copy process.

Now, whenever I attempt to even play audio files from a
CD or files that have been on my computer for months that
I once copied off of a CD, WMP decides to stop
responding, and takes Windows along with it, forcing me
to manually shut down the computer each time.

I've tried giving the computer time (5-10 minutes) to
start responding again, and also tried closing down any
programs that are running in the background (namely AOL
Instant Messenger), and this still does not solve the
problem. Windows functions fine up until I get
approximately 30 seconds to a minute into a song I try to
play, then any play control, maximize, minimize or other
computer functions decide to not work, yet the song
continues to play until I manually shut down the
computer. Note that WMP works fine until I play an audio
file, and even works fine when playing videos. I know
it's not the audio's fault, since I can play it fine off
of CDs or the hard drive using Winamp, and Windows does
not freeze.

I'm using the latest updates to WMP ('You have the latest
version of Windows Media Player 9 Series and all its
components. No update is available at this time.'), but
I am not sure if there is patch I should download or
setting I should change.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.