DX 6.3 hangs when Mediastor service is brought online

Environment: Win 2003 Ent Cluster / DX 6.3 patch 3 / MS 6.3 - both reside on the same cluster. This is an environment that was setup by consultants many years ago when MS was supported on a Cluster.  We upgraded to DX 6.1, then 6.3 and had did the same with MS.

ISSUE:

Our ultimate goal is to get rid of the Plasmon jukebox which is controlled by MS. But can't get the remaining files off Plasmon media because MS hangs DX.  The DiskXtender system runs fine communicating with the Centera and users can retreive images. I was able to bring MS online last night and retreive images so I kicked off a pre-fetch for (1) piece of plasmon media.  This morning users could query records but when they attempted to view the image, no response, no error.  AS soon as I stopped the Mediastor service (windows service) the images appeared.

Help:

I need to know if anyone has seen this before and a possible solution. OR if someone has a recommendation/procedure for moving MS to a stand-alone server AND making sure DX can still see the media in the media groups.