Video crashing OS.

[jjd]

I have a Fujitsu-Siemens laptop with SiS graphics and am using Linux Mint 13 with the update from https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/sis.
Like so many others I am suffering system crashes back to login when trying to run videos using any of the players, but should it be of any use to anyone trying to solve this problem I have found that the crashes do not happen running VLC on the live CD. The graphics are of course distorted, but one can stop and start videos, switch from one to another, fullscreen, it seems to be solid.
Maybe it's just the lower resolution?
 I hope this may be of use to someone who knows more about software than I do (not difficult!).