I went into msconfig, and disabled two of the four items that were there. The only two remaining items are for AVG antivirus. I then went to that fireworks site and it froze after three clicks in the sky. Had to manually shut down, could not get to task manager.
Then just for fun, I left IE and OE open. I then put a video in the DVD player, no problems at all. I watch about three minutes with no problem.
I have cable internet, behind a linksys router, and have the XP firewall enabled.