Windows 7: Windows Media Player is playing slow.

My windows media player is playing very slow. The audio and video are not in sync for most videos. It takes forever for the video to skip during the short videos. This problem started about a month ago.

My Norton virus protection stated that the player is using 65% CPU. I don't have a lot of other programs running.

I have no idea what the problem may be. Other programs are not running slowly. I doubt the videos are a problem because there are many of them. It's doubt 500 video files are broken. I did a virus scan and there are no viruses on my computer. Windows Media Player is up to date.




By the way I'm using Windows 7.

Hi RATEDRKO.
Go to WMP Options > Performance tab > DVD and video reproduction > check "Drop frames to keep audio and video synchronized" box.
Now go to Privacy tab > History > press Clean History / Clean Cache. Then press Apply and OK.
Let us know the results.

The CU usage went from 65% to at least 48%. The videos appear to be in sync. I need to check more videos to be 100% sure. However, the skipping for some videos still takes at least 30 seconds to start.

Thanks for the advice.

You're welcome.
Are these videos in AVI and MP4 formats? Some encodings and codec packages yield problems as you report.

They are WMV and MP3.

Any codec package installed?!...

I have the K-Lite Codec pack installed.

EDIT: After testing it a bit more the problem has returned. The video files are in an external harddrive. If I pause a video for a few minutes then the harddrive will disconnect itself. This wasn't happening before I change Window Media Player's sitings.

Try VLC. WMP is rather useless.

If you want to rant randomly instead of help, don't post at all!

It would definitely help if we knew your system specs, but it sounds to me like you need to change your power settings, because "USB selective suspend" is probably turned on. If you own a laptop, this might not be the best setting to change but it still might be the solution to your problem.

1. Start menu -> type into search "power" and choose Power Options under Control Panel results
2. Find your power plan and click "Change plan settings", then "change advanced power settings"
3. Scroll down until you find "USB settings", there change "USB selective suspend" to disabled
4. Apply -> OK -> close both windows

How do I find my system specs.