VS7SE - fail to capture .. problem resultant .avi

[gorgi]

capturing home movie video thru IEEE card using V7 SE ... never any problems to date but now I'm getting errors in the capturing of some of the split-by-scene .avi's
The capture proceeds apparently Ok till the end of the tape (1 hour) but then as VS tries to load the avi files it messages that there were problems with some of the resultant .avi files and then just shuts itself down automatically without any chance to save the project/library/etc.
The avi files are in the destination directory but if I try to select any of them in windows then a windows explorer error is returned (the only way I can delete them then is to highlight them in rebooted VS and press delete key)
I have deleted the captured files and re-run the capture several times but still get the problem with resultant .avi's (although there's no consistency in the particular files that are a problem)
I have not had any problems like this before, no new programs are installed or running ...there's plenty of disk and memory .. (win2000 OS)
I've tried capturing without split by scene but same problem
is it worth reinstalling VS7?
I also noticed that after this problem, if palying the .avi files or any other good audio files from disk or CD produces a "slowed speed" replay unless I reboot the whole PC
any other suggetsions/comments/help?