Windows Media Player Causes CPU to run at 100%

[Craig Beverley]

Ok, so I'm currently on my computer, wondering why its running slow, when i look at my CPU usage, its on 100% for both cores, the culprit is WMP... Is their any reason on why windows media player slams so much usage on my CPU, it goes from 5% max each core up to minimum 87% on core 1 & 2?

Gigabyte M52LT-D3 Motherboard
AMD Athlon II X2 245 2.9GHz
4GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 440GT 1GB

 

[whs]

Did you check any of the Enhancements in the Properties of the Playback device. Enhancements can eat CPU power.

 

[Craig Beverley]

Everything on WMP is set to its default settings, nothing has been changed except for the equalizer.

 

[whs]

How about the ' Playback devices " - the ones accessed from the speaker icon in the task tray. Those that are in the device properties > Enhancement tab.

And the WMP equalizer can play an act on you too.

 

[Craig Beverley]

The playback devices are shown in the picture and the sound scheme is set to Windows Default.

 

[whs]

Double click on " Speakers " and check in the Enhancement tab.

 

[Craig Beverley]

Nothing has been changed on that and all tick boxes within the selection screen are all unticked.

 

[whs]

Check in Reource Monitor > CPU tab which processes are actually monopolizing the CPU.

 

[Craig Beverley]

It's weird, its running at about 32% average now yet it's no different from last time.

 

[Craig Beverley]

And here its jumped to 47% average in the space of 2 minutes.

 

[whs]

The main CPU user is the WMP. For a test, switch off the equalizer and see what that does.

 

[Craig Beverley]

By the looks of things the equalizer isn't the problem i left it running for 3 songs and that was the CPU usage, also included the CPU Meter gadget to show what my CPU's are running at.

 

[whs]

Yeah right, that's no different. I just checked on mine running WMP. There was less than 1% CPU usage - it showed as zero. The number of threads were the same though. Some thread must have gone haywire.

The thing you can try is to make a http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html. Maybe it fixes the problem.

 

[Craig Beverley]

So you believe it could be a potential driver/application coding error causing the CPU to be stressed? If so I'm getting a SSD in the next month and don't listen to music that much, I will be installing a newer Windows 7 OS on that so this could save going through a repair?

 

[whs]

If you do a reinstallation anyhow, there is no need to chase this old bugger. My guess would be that it is either some.dll that is on the blink or that there is a conflict with some other running process. But that would be difficult to id for certain. You can only use the shotgun approach trying to fix it.