Live TV and Recorded TV intermittently not loading

Geez HTPC's can be bloody frustrating. Whilst i don't regret not getting a single box solution (already have 2 others - PS3 and Popcorn Hour), i didn't think it would be this hard to get something that works reliably.

Specs of rig are:
Gigabyte 785GPM - UD2h motherboard
AMD 250
4 gb Ram
WD 1tb Green HD
Hauppage 2200

Running:
Win 7 x64
ATI Catalyst 9.10(?) - (whatever is the most recent)
Sharks Codec pack (note problem detailed below happened before installation of codec pack).

So the problem i'm asking for help in this post relates to live tv and recorded tv sometimes causing MCE to freeze up when opening.
The blue circle will come up and spin very slowly, wait a few seconds the screen will go black, and then audio will stream through in small bits then pause - like really slow speed stuttering. Even trying to load up a WTV file from WMP will result in the same. Interestingly, it will stream a 1080p mkv from the network no probs when doing this.

A restart will fix this problem, and as far as i can tell it only happens when the pc comes out of sleep - but not all the time. Updating video drivers didn't fix the problem - neither did audio. Running MS hauppage driver. CPU load gets high initially (>90%) but then settles down to 50% but still no video and stuttering sound. I've disabled CnQ with no improvement.

And just to throw another one into the mix, i'm sometimes having problems with avi's and mkv's too. Video will pause, sound may slightly pause then continue and then the video speeds up to again become in synch 10 seconds later.

All the above happened with x86 and x64.

Thanks

Did you ever solved this issue? I'm having the same problem.