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

Finally a post that makes sense!!  Went to the cnet forum and found that this issue has been present since the good old XP days.  I too use a DLNA client --  XBOX 360.  You would think by now a diagnostic would be available to discover and document corrupted files so the user doesn't have to go thru what Closch and others have done...that is flush out .avi files and try to reinstall one at a time to discover the corrupted one(s).

I jumped thru a lot of hoops based on microsoft advice with no joy on any of them (look at earlier responses) but finally have an approach that I think may work.  This also makes sense to me because I do not have the problem on my laptop probably because I did not port all my media files (including the corrupted one(s)) over from my desktop!

I will now try this approach...delete .avi files and try reloading one at a time to discover which one(s) is/are causing the problem.  If indeed this works I will come back on and mark this as an answer.

Thanks again.

Answer 4

Unforthnately no joy on this approach.  Found only 2 avi files (in an old printer driver folder of all places) and deleted them and still had problems.  Windows 7 has multiple file extensions for media -- .wma for audio, .wmv for video, .wtv for recorded tv and so on.  Went in and flushed out as many of these as possible.  Some came with desktop and are protected.

After deleting (moved my audio files to a flash drive), I turned on media streaming and problem still there.  When media player on it is in a constant updating media mode spiking up to 50% cpu utilization.  When I shut down media player, wmpnetwk kicks in at a constant 33% cpu utilization.  I block media sharing and restart and open media player and original problem with constant media updating is on, but when I shut down, wmpnetwk does not kick in which is where I am now.  No media sharing.  Geez!  Definitely need a diagnostic for this. Just glad I am not a heavy media user, but still irritated that a "core" windows function not working properly!

Answer 5

Sad to hear as indeed a corrupt file can be the cause of this problem.

However this is not limited to AVI, might be any file

What you can try.

Make one directory e.g. C:\sound

In WMP point both Library and Rip folder to C:\sound

Stop media sharing

Delete the old library

Reboot (the magical MS reset)

Start WMP

Enable media sharing

Keep your fingers crossed.

I’m inclined to say that with a empty library (and hopefully) media sharing now pointing to this new library only, CPU should rapidly drop to 0.

If this is true, now your in for the tedious part.

Drag/drop a bunch of files to C:\sound

The media sharing should kick in but not to long, repeat until you get the same problem

Open the Resource Monitor, choose disk and watch the files pass by

Maybe this is the trick to detect a corrupt file

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