100% CPU when playing media

[danny640]

My notebook (W7 Pro, x64) has recently developed a problem with playing media. The first few minutes are OK, and then it shoots up to 100% CPU and stays there, making the media unplayable.

It happens with all media applications: Flash (any browser), VLC, Windows Media Player, BBC iPlayer, anything. Also it doesn't make any difference whether it's video or audio, both cause the problem.

And it isn't the media application itself that appears to be using all the CPU: basically a number of unrelated processes grab themselves a big chunk each. Even the Task Manager shows as consuming 10%-20%! And if I shut down the media application/close the browser or whatever, the 100% CPU utilisation continues for several minutes longer, and then slowly subsides to a normal level.

I've updated the video and audio drivers, disabled active scanning in anti-virus (Avast), stopped lots non-essential processes, and unplugged all USB peripherals but all with no effect.

Any suggestions gratefully received!

 

[Andyrids]

Not sure if this is related or not but worth a shot... I was experiencing a similar problem after installing a USB modem the upnphost service was the problem as it kept on triggering attempting to search for and connect other devices that did not exist.

I stopped and then disabled the UPnP Device Host service and that solved the problem.