Read below. I may have a solution to your problem.
While I was ripping MP3's using the internal LAME encoder the computer would just lock up, no mouse movement, no ctl/alt/del, no nothing. I tried all the different buffer settings and the rest and nothing worked. I have an amd xp 2000 (overclocked), soyo kt 333 dragon ultra mboard, win xp, on board sound and tdk velocd 40/12/48 burner.
I decided to download all the latest drivers/bios/firmware etc. After some research on the internet this is what I did and it seems to have solved my problems.
1. downloaded latest firmware for my cdr.
2. downloaded latest winxp updates
3. downloaded latest MJ 8.0 updates
4. downloaded and flashed mboard bios with latest bios
5. downloaded and flashed via kt333 chipset with latest bios
6. in device manager, changed transfer mode of ide controller that my cdr was on to "DMA if Available".
7. changed motherboard bios settings to optimized default settings.
I am not sure which one of these things was the key, but I think the bios flash and the default mboard bios setting (although I had to change some settings from default) did the trick.
I am not overclocking anymore also. Now it works flawlessly.
I hope the above works for you. good luck