Movie maker continually stops working

Hi. I am having a continuing problem with movie maker which came as part of widows live essentials 2012. I am running windows 8.1 64 bit and have uninstalled and reinstalled windows essentials 2012 numerous times. Every time I try using movie maker, things appear to be going fine at first. I can add the videos I want to edit then splice without a problem, then out of the blue, I get a window opens and it tells me that movie maker has stopped working. The files I am trying to use are .avi. I have read many different things about this particular problem when I google the problem and have tried numerous suggested things to fix the problem, but none seem to work. I have checked that all the various drivers ect are up to date, which they are and still am unable to use the program. Has anyone else suffered the same problem and if so how did you overcome the problem and get movie maker working again. Alternatively can anyone recommend a different form of movie maker software that is easy and reliable to use.