Problem with Windows Media Encoder V9

Hi all!
I'm trying to convert some video and stream it onto my website - and I'm running into problems all the time...

Windows Media Encoder takes ages to do ANYTHING - ie. cpu usage at 100% all the time, windows actually take 5 mins to appear etc. etc. Any ideas?

If I don't use WME, what can I use instead? Thinking of Real, Quicktime. etc.

My pc is an Athlon 1.4 with 512 meg ram and 80 gig hard drive space, so I can't see a problem there....windows is XP with all patches

:mad:

Sounds like it could be a DirectX problem or similar. Try reinstalling DirectX? Could also try video card drivers.

Recently upgraded to Catalyst 3.10 - could cause a problem I suppose.
Not having any other problems though....could it be a codec problem?