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

Hi, 

I have the same issue with with Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service going over 300 MB in memory and using 33%+ of CPU resource. Perhaps this can be of help.

1. Go to Control Panel.
2. Administrative Tools.
3. Services.
4. Located Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service.
5. Right click and select Properties.
6. Change "Startup Type" to Disabled.
7. Press Windows + R and type taskmgr
8. Check that wmpnetwk.exe is not in the process list tab, if it is select it and press button "End Process" to make sure its not running anymore.
9. Go back to the Properties window and change "Startup Type" to Manual.
10. Restart the computer.
11. Repeat steps 1-5.
12. Change "Startup Type" to Automatic.
13. Open Windows Media Player (I think you should get a message asking if you want to share library select NO).
14. Go to Tools.. Then select Options.
15. In the Library Tab, select Monitor Folders.
16. Remove and/or disable all monitored folders. (Note: RIP Music folder cannot be disabled, if you have music there I suggest you move it to another folder and then add it later)
17. Now I changed the "skip files smaller than" to the following:

Audio files = 1024

Video files = 8192 (since I stream videos to my Xbox I don't see why it should windows media should monitor files less than 1MB unless so 8MB is good for me). 18. Add each folder back one at a time that you wish to share, but make sure that each time you add the folder CPU usage is acceptable. 19. If you want to stream the files over the network then select Configure sharing and tick the "Share my media"

I am running Windows XP 64-bit SP2 with all the latest updates and using Windows Media Player 11 (I just rebuilt the OS) however it seemed I had a very similar issue, so I hope this helps solve your problem.

EDIT: It's also a good idea to keep an eye on the progress of the current folder Windows Media Player gets stuck on when adding media into the library, that way you can move half of the files to another folder, add the folder back into Media Player and keep repeating the process until you find the corrupted file.

Answer 4

I started to follow these steps, but found something interesting in the process.  I removed the monitered folders for music and created a new one called c:\music tracks.  When I went to the folders that were monitored (users/.../mymusic for example) all the music tracks were gone!!  why, I don't know.  Regardless I began to rebuild my music library by ripping cd albums.  Each album and their tracks went into the new monitored folder without issue.  Also, the cpu and constant updating issues were gone.  I did uncheck update media from internet so that may have helped.

I also noticed that in pictures and videos that along with the mypictures and myvideo folders c:\ was tagged as being monitored.  I removed c:\ from each.  That might have explained the long updating media cycle.

Bottom line is what I originally had in the music library is gone, but I am rebuilding it and none of the issues I had with wmp or the network sharing module appear to be there now.

I believe that this problem may have occured as a result of my upgrade from VISTA to Windows 7 and by flushing out the old and rebuilding the new the problem has disappeared (for now). 

I have verified that my newly created library is accessable to my laptop thru Windows Media Center and am in the process of rebuilding the shared library on my XBOX 360.

Answer 5

Glad your solution worked.  Bottom line is that this usually occurs when something in one of the libraries gets corrupted.  Solution then is to  "disconnect" media folders, create new library folders, point media center at them and then reload the individual files to see which one, if any, is corrupted.  The interesting thing for me was that after going thru Tomek W's steps above, I found that I could not load my media library in Windows Media Center on my XBOX 360.  That resulted in a long new thread, the bottom line of which is that I encountred a glitch when I upgraded my desktop from Vista Premium to Windows 7 Premium and had to reinstall Windows 7 of all things to solve the problem (and fix a problem with the reinstall!).  Finally after a lot of research and sweat, everything is working fine.