Windows 7 Windows Media Player 12 crashes when playing certain videos

What format are they in?

The extension is .mpg

I can view them on another networked PC running Windows XP and Media Player 11 with no problem. VLC has no problem playing them either.
I also checked the codecs used with Gspot from the Win XP machine and it showed that the videos are MPEG-2 and audio AC3 48000Hz 256 kb/s.
And in the Gspot Proposed Codec Solutions and tests, it states:
Render OK. The following combination of filters was used:
SRC (A) MPEG-2 Demultiplexer - (B) Ulead MPEG Video Decoder (C) Video Renderer
SCR (A) MPEG-2 Demultiplexer - (B) AC3Filter (C) Default Direct Sound Device

I do not have any of the old software on the new machine with Windows 7.

When I re-ripped the original DVD (just for testing), it plays fine on WMP 12. But I don't want to re-rip all my originals again. There must be some codec that I'm missing that will allow me to play it on WMP 12.

What I can't understand is why WMP 12 is the only software that has a problem playing it on the Windows 7 computer.

Well I downloaded and installed ffdshow, but I still can't play the video in WMP 12. It plays fine in Windows Media center though.
Unless I did not configure the ffdshow properly? I left the defaults the way they were and tried the file. Then tried to enable a couple of codecs like MPG-2, but that didn't work either. Gave up since I didn't really know what I was doing with that application.

Any other ideas??

Thanks

Is it normal for WMP 12 to stop responding if a video or audio codec is missing?

Shouldn't it just give me a message that the video can not be played for what ever reason...