Need help with PSO ver.2

[Excalibur007]

Hi,
I have 3 different copies of PSO ver.2, and they all have the same problem. When I'm playing it, I get to the end of the 3rd mission from the Hunter's guild where you go to "Forest 1" with the other guy (I think it's a RaCast), and when I find the man laying on the ground at the end of the mission, I go up to him and after the short dialog, the game freezes.
The first time I played it, I didn't have this problem. I got up to around the 8 or 9th mission before I quit playing. I created a new save file and character since then and I haven't been able to get past that part without it freezing up since.
There are NO scratches on my CD's and I even ripped the files with isobuster just to make sure that there were no bad sectors on my disks.

My question...
Has anyone else had this problem with the game?
If so, what did you do to correct it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much,
-Ex