Video Freezing Computer

Ok, so here's the situation. The past 3 days whenever I open any video (wmv, mpg, etc.) in any video player (WMP, Real, etc.) it 1) doesn't play the video, but DOES play the sound, 2) won't shut down, slows down the computer, and when you try to shut down the media player it freezes the computer totally - cant even control-alt-delete it or even move the mouse.

This all happened after I installed the Catalyst 5.7's. I know others have had this problem as well after instally the Catalyst 5.7's. Now you see, I have no problem at all reverting to a past video driver and infact have tried that, but whatever problem it caused it created it in some non-ati device/program. Which program? I suspect the .net framework as now when I shutdown I get .netbroadcastwindow end-program dialog. Again, others have had that problem as well after updating to the Catalyst 5.7's.

What I have tried: Going back to the older Omega's I had installed - no good. Going back to the old driver from the sager website - no good. Checking to make sure all my codecs are working properly (using a program called Sherlock), again no good. Ran 2 antiviruses, and 4 spy/adware to see if that may be causing the problem, nope. Heck, I even tried removing and reinstalling the .net framework, again no-go. The only change to this computer within this time was installing the Catalyst 5.7's (I've tried both the DH-mod and the ATI mobile). It's not multiple driver conflict either as I both uninstall and use driver cleaner programs to remove them from my computer.

Oh, and incase it matters - videos WILL play as long as they are played using quicktime inside of a browser only.


Any suggestions that I haven't though of?


Edit: Computer is a 5680, video card is a ATI 9600.

Nope
I went into safe mode and uninstalled the drivers and then used Driver Cleaner Pro to remove the files that uninstall didn't get. However, when I tried to install the drivers again while in safe mode, I got an INF error and an error saying that it couldn't install because DirectX8 could not be found. Well I have DirectX9c installed, so I don't know what that was about. I had to reboot into normal mode just to get them to install. Rebooted again after installation and the same problem.

Ok, small update. Tried restoring computer to before the problem arose and that didn't help.

What did help was going into Windows Media Player and turning on "Use High Quality Mode" for Media Acceleration. So now all videos will play in Windows Media Player without any problem. However, RealPlayer movies will not since it does not have the same feature as WMP. WMP will not even open up the Real movies, so don't tell me about file associations

Any way to get Real files to play in WMP, or now that the problem seems to be the Media Acceleration, any other ideas? I've tried turning off Media Acceleration globally, that didn't work.