[Help] High windows media player CPU usage

[breadandbubbles]

alright, i had a huge problem placing this one. it seems that windows media player is the problem but im definately eyeing my system in general, also windows media player 10 is, i thought anyway, exlusive to Windows XP.

so if anyone wants to move this thats fine, and im sorry. but im certain im having a problem with Windows.

alright, to get started. when i play music via Windows Media Player 10 on my Windows XP Pro PC, it stutters. freezes up. i have a 1GB (two 512 sticks of OCZ DDR2 800mhz ram), and a 3.2 ghz pentium (i know, i KNOW, i shouldve gone with AMD).

anyway in my system processes it says im using up about 55 - 65 percent of my CPU. man. it DOES NOT take that much CPU to play a song! it also says "system" is using about 25 percent.

now, i have noticed my PC is running hottish. i mean i know its a prescott, but its running on idle at about 60 degrees celcius. i posted last year about a freezing system and asked if it was heat and when that was confirmed, i got some ARCTIC SILVER and brought my CPU temp down like 15 degrees on idle. \

very nice.

but its STILL freezes up easily. do i need to invest in some serious heat sink? or is it something to do with XP? because windows media player certainly doesnt use that much CPU.

oh i should clarify that ive always had this problem.

is there any more information i need to post that might help anyone reading this? just let me know (and let me know how to find it).

thanks all.

[Sonic]

I have already seen this problem on a pc with WMP ... process grow up to 100% cpu usage , or big memory usage ... finally music freeze or stutt ... I have switched it to winamp & bsplayer ... perhaps try install a fresh install with only windows sp2 & drivers & wmp10 & try to reproduce problem.

It was appears with P4 HT too.

[ripken204]

so, whats the problem? lol. i hate wmp very much. today in school i wanted to play a song that i made at home, wmp10 wouldnt play it so the only other program that could play an mp3 on the computer was macromedia flash, and guess what, it worked.

i use vlc media player for movies and winamp for music, give those a try.

for the system processes, run services.msc and disable what u dont need. also run msconfig to disable programs from starting up. you should have less than 40 programs running, i have just under 30.

you should also look at the event viewer to see what is going on, see if there are any errors

[LLXX]

WMP10 is noted for its extremely high utilisation of resources. Maybe downgrading to 8 or 9 may help the situation.

now, i have noticed my PC is running hottish. i mean i know its a prescott, but its running on idle at about 60 degrees celcius. i posted last year about a freezing system and asked if it was heat and when that was confirmed, i got some ARCTIC SILVER and brought my CPU temp down like 15 degrees on idle. \

It is most likely also a temperature problem as well. Unlike AMD CPUs, Intels have thermal protection which halves or quarters the clock frequency when the temperature exceeds a fixed setpoint. If it's idling at 60°C, when loaded by the WMP etc. the temperature rises, beyond the temperature limit, and the 3.2GHz P4 becomes 1.6GHz or even 800MHz. That may be what's causing the freezing and stuttering.

If you can underclock the CPU, do so. It may actually *improve* performance since at the lower clock speed the temperature limit isn't reached and the thermal limiter doesn't get activated.

[breadandbubbles]

i knew id get suggestions to use winamp

man, i lvoe windows media player. all it needs and some codecs, and it rocks. i love its library format. easy to use.

but if it uses so much in resources, i guess i have no choice. i figured i had enough resources to give though. 3.2 Ghz is a lot.

ah well. ill have to try winamp...

its rerally interesting to hear you say that though LLXX. ive been wanting to overclock for a while, just to squeeze out another few hundred Mhz, but my temp. is so **** HIGH. i think youre veryy right about underclcking, but if i could get my CPU temp down, could i actually overclock it?

[cluberti]

Turning visualizations off helps WMP utilization A LOT - if you haven't already, it's worth a shot.

[Sonic]

For my case, I have tried this too ... but in fact that pushed back (= increase the delay of ? sorry for my english!) the freezes/stutts.

[LLXX]

its rerally interesting to hear you say that though LLXX. ive been wanting to overclock for a while, just to squeeze out another few hundred Mhz, but my temp. is so **** HIGH. i think youre veryy right about underclcking, but if i could get my CPU temp down, could i actually overclock it?

The thermal limiter on most Intel CPUs activates around 68-70°C. If you're idling at 60°, then it will definitely reach the limit when loaded. But, with good cooling, if you can get the temperatures to stay down in the low 50s under load, it should be possible to overclock a bit.

However, if you overclocked it to e.g. 3.6GHz and it works, but is now running closer to the thermal limiter setpoint, under load it may go down to 1.8GHz or 900MHz which is far worse than the 3.2GHz you started with.

I can tell this from experience. I have a 2.4GHz Celeron that I overclocked to 3.7 - it was able to boot into Windows and otherwise seemed to work, but under benchmarking it performed equivalent to 850MHz without crashing or freezing, and the temperature remained steady at 68°C. This was because the thermal limiter was activated and in fact the CPU wasn't running at 3.7GHz, it was at 850MHz.

[gianparz]

In my case the problem with he high usage of the cpu was caused by an "ARESTRA" file (the provisional file created by Ares) located in the windows media player library monitored folders. Start a scan of the library with F3 in order to find out which file cause the block. If you cant find it just delete all the folders in tools>options>library>monitor folders. Somebody let me know if it worked..

[naza911]

Sound like a problem with a conflicting application. Run it playing song and start-up task manager. The slowly kill the processes that arel isted with your user name and see if it helps. I only face this problem once with winamp and google talk on a celeron.

[FiercePsycho]

I know this is a long time ago. If it helps, look trough the uncompleted files in the library files not fully downloaded like gianparz said the arestra_ files, limewire files with numbers. They make make media player wanting to find those files, but since they aren't completed or corrupted it can't.

Hope this helps some peoples.

And many thanks to gianparz for helping me in the first place.

[cluberti]

The thread is from January 2006, with no posts from Feb 2006 to April 2008, and again resurrected in November 2008 without a response from the OP (I'm quite sure by this time he/she has moved on).

Closing.