Windows Media Player network sharing using 33% of CPU resources

Question

Media Media Player network sharing module chewing up cpu

I am encountering a cpu utilization problem similar to others concerning window media player cpu utilization.  I used the process explorer tool and found that the wmpnetwk process was continulally using 33% of my cpu resources even when media player wasn't started.  Media player itrself uses about 20-22% cpu when it is opened and a media upate is in progress, which is all the time. MY PC has a triple core processor so this is a pretty big chunk of cpu utilization!   I tried all the suggested fixes to no avail.  This may be a more unique problem.  I upgraded to Windows 7 64 premium from vista 64 premium but did not do a clean (wipe everything out) install.  Found a number of problems with user applications and reinstalled them.  Since media player and media center are part of the operating system apparently I cannot do this for them.  This JUST started happening.  Is it possible the last update did something?  Also I have a laptop with windows 7 preinstalled and am not having the same problem.  At this point I am considering turning media center and media player off and setting adobe media player as my default until someone can come up with a better suggestion.

Quick update.  Just deactivated media center and media player and cpu utilization is back to a low level.  Question remains.  Why is wmpnetwk  using so much cpu?

Answer 1

Actually I've found my steps might be a little over the top and quite tedious.

You can actually do the following which saves some time! wmplayer.exe is responsible for managing the shared library, the wmpnetwk.exe shares this library over the network**[please correct me if I'm wrong here]** 

1. Open Windows Media Player and remove all monitored folders and close Windows Media Player (for me Windows Media Player became unresponsive after it was consuming over 300 Mb so I forcibly closed it), open it up again keeping an eye on the Windows Media Player (wmplayer.exe) process to make sure CPU consumption is acceptable.
2. Add ONE monitored folder into Windows Media Player.
3. When the dialog opens up showing the progress of added files in the library, keep an eye if it gets stuck for a long time (around 2-5 min+, normally you will find that memory usage starts to spike rapidly) and take a note which folder/sub-folder it got stuck on. (This is a good indicator that a file in that folder may be corrupt), if the dialog completes then that monitored folder has no issues.
4. If there was an issue with step 3, close the progress dialog, remove that monitored folder, close Windows Media Player and move half the files in that folder you took note of to another unmonitoredfolder. Repeat steps 2-4 until the monitored folder completes its search.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 until you have added all folders back into Windows Media Player.

 I'm not sure why there is no code in windows media player to check if a files corrupt, but there definitely is a memory leak in the application and hopefully this will be corrected my Microsoft soon!

Answer 2

I have the same issue. When enabled, networksharing uses about 25% of system resources (on a quad core processor with 8 gigs of ram. This seems excessive to say the least.  And the slowdown in system performance is not acceptable. I have explored all the options discussed in this tread, and also for me, none have helped. Are there any new suggestions?

 I folowed the advise of Tomek W in steps 1-11, and stopped there as I am not that into computers like you all seem to be. After step 11, as described- twice thru the first 10m steps, I restarted and waited for 'wmpnetwk.exe' to take control again. It did not. I have restarted again this AM, no problem. The only difference between Tomek's scheme and mine is that the second trip thru step # 9 I 'disabled' the "startup type". Everything works fine so far.

Thanks all, Doug

Answer 3

I will try the performance check procedures, but I go back to my orginal point which is that there is something wrong with media player 12 and its associated network sharing module -- wmpnetwk.  By turning off media streaming and not opening media player, my destktop is running fine with no runaway cpu usage.  This problem arose recently with no actions from me (configuration changes in media player).  I am familiar with system restore, but am not sure which restore point to use, might have to try multiple restores to get back to an efficient system, then be concerned that subsequently reapplying system updates may reintroduce the problem(s).  Will try out these things and come back with a response. 

If indeed the performance monitor points out that wmp is the issue, we are back to square one, which is turning off media streaming and not using wmp which essentially limits functionality of my PC.  In essence, my question and concern remains not answered.

Answer 4

No joy on either suggestion.  No performance issues were detected with my PC, and trying to restore back before the last set of updates went in resulted in a hung system.  Had to reboot in safe mode and restore to a later date.  Back to turning off media streaming which limits functionality.  Did notice that a "device" was missing:  the wireless filter, which I believe happened when I upgraded to Windows 7, so was not part of the problem and is not causing any issues I can see.  Is there a debugging tool that can be used to see exactly what wmpnetwk is doing that would cause it to chew up 33% cpu?

Answer 5

Hi,

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**Method 1:**I would suggest you to use the below mentioned steps to rebuild your library and then check -

1. Shutdown windows media player.
2. Stop the media sharing service manually. For that follow the steps as -

Go to Start->Control Panel->All Control Panel Items->Administrative Tools->Services.  Right-click on the “Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service” and select Stop. 3. Navigate to “c:\Users\”your username”\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player.  Now delete the files named CurrentDatabase_***.wmdb and LocalMLS_*.wmdb.

OR

Open Windows Media Player. Press CTRL+M then from the Tools menu click on Advanced and then Restore Media Library to reset the Media Player library.

1. Start the media sharing service.
2. Now start Windows Media Player and watch it build up your library again.

**Method 2:**I would suggest you to create a new user profile and check if the issue appears there.

For additional assistance you may refer to the link - Create a new user account-

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/Windows7/Create-a-user-account

 If you do not face the issue in new user account then it might be an issue with the user account. It may have gone corrupt or is not working properly. I would suggest you to refer to the below mentioned link to fix a corrupted user profile and follow the steps provided-

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/Windows7/Fix-a-corrupted-user-profile

Hope this helps. Let us know the results.

Thanks,

Meghmala – Microsoft Support

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