ac3 filter crashing my laptop

[bowie007]

hello there,
i have a little problem, i am trying to view a file that is encoded with ac3 sound on my laptop (dell inspiron), i am taking it from my harddrive where it plays fine. The video plays fine but there is no audio,so i downloaded the ac3 filter, after installing this on my laptop, whenever i open the file (using wmp) the whole laptop freezes, forcing me to restart it. I have uninstalled the ac3 filter and the problem with the freezing goes but the video with no audio is back. I have tried installing the ffdshow pack (which has an ac3 filter) and the same thing happens. Is there a way of hearing ac3 sound using a different filter or am i just doing somthing dumb. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
p.s files that have other sound play fine

[BJ_M]

make sure you set it to downmix to stereo , also -- you might have to have it resample to 44.1 khz

[bowie007]

thanks, i wil try it as soon as i get home from work
edit: i tried what you said but it is still the same. I did try playing it through vlc and it plays for around 20 seconds then it freezes. The laptop only has 250 ram ....does that matter?. The strange thing is that any files other than ac3 work fine. Anymore suggestions?.