Hey PK!
Red Media Player anyone?
I installed again AVAST 6 (6.0.1086), the problem is still there I write again my configuration : Windows XP Home edition SP3 ; 2.17 GHz ; 1.00 Gb RAM. - Windows Media Player 11, with the default skin.
Easiest solution: Use VLC.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Yes, as Logos wrote, using VLC doesn't resolve the problem. I have almost 100 Gb of Music in my Windows Media Player library and I know WMP11 perfectly. I don't want to use another player.
I must add too that it affects some videos playings too with WMP11, not all videos playings, but some of them : the videos pause very often .... exactly the same problem I have on YOUTUBE with all AVAST versions
I installed again the latest build of AVAST 5, WMP11 works perfectly with AVAST 5. I hope that the VPS updates will be available for a long time for AVAST 5, most of the programs stop the updates for the previous versions when they launch a new version.