Windows Media Player Errors -- CPU Usage

Hi,

For about 2 wks, WMplayer has been causing the CPU usage to rise to 100% (according to Task Manager) and begin to "skip" and halt about 3/4 way through a song while playing mp3s on my computer. No other app or media player does this. I have all the latest patches, updates, virus protection, firewall, etc. and check for ad/spyware.

Belarc profile attached. Only other clue, if related, is that Windows Explorer itself briefly (2 days) hung and caused a high CPU usage before the WMplayer error started. Now Windows Explorer is fine.

Any help is appreciated -- thanks!

 

Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the task manager. Under the processes tab, find the busy process.

Also look for a DLLHOST.EXE process in task manager.

Steve

 

Thanks, Steve. Happy New Year. Ok, the wmplayer.exe is the busy process, rising as the song plays, consuming more memory and CPU as a song plays until skipping starts. No dllhost.exe process is shown in the task manager. What next?

 

Bostongemini,

Happy New Year to you. Going to put a couple of links below, try them and see if anything surfaces. Still checking on other causes. Are you using WMP 9 or 10? Found this for Series 9 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=832732

Trend Micro
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

McAfee FreeScan
http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp

Panda ActiveScan
http://www.pandasoftware.com/active...n_principal.htm

Download, update (be sure and update)and run these to remove spyware/adware:

Ad-Aware SE Personal
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download506.html

SpyBot-Search & Destroy
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2471.html

Let us know.

Steve

 

Hi. I'm using Windows Media Player 10, but have tried various combinations of uninstalling it, rolling back to 9 series, redownloading 10, etc. No effect. I regularly use Adaware and Spybot, and McAfee Vscan & Shield. I'll run them all again, as well as the other services/links you've given.

Is there any chance it could be an error associated with low hard disk space, possibly interfering with page file creation on the drive? I've got below 15% free space, as I need to copy some videos to DVD. I've gotten low on space before, without this problem.

Thanks for your help.

 

You have mentioned "causing the error" twice in your posts. Are you getting an error message with WMP? If so, what does it say.

Steve

 

No Error message. I just used "the error" to describe the behavior of wmplayer skipping and halting each and every time I play a song using it, approximately 2/3 of the way thru the song. I've tried other media players (none are perfect) but for some reason I really prefer Windows Media player.

No formal error message, though. Just the skipping, and high CPU and Memory usage indicated by Task Manager.

 

OK. You will get some other replies / suggestions, don't give up on it. I will be looking around for you.

Steve