Vista - Windows Media Player Runs Slowwwwww......

I have about 3500 tracks in media player. It seems to load right away, but I
can't do anything beyond the initial screen that comes up. In my case, the
last screen I used was an artist view of my library. If I use the scrollbar
or click a letter to jump to it doesn't move for about 20 seconds.

I'd like to say that it's just media player in general but I had media
player on my XP laptop and didn't have any problems. I had the latest
version. Now I have a 64-bit Vista Ultimate laptop with Centrino Duo 2.0 and
it runs slow. While looking at my performance monitor, I see nothing going
on. In the title bar of the application it even says, "Not Responding"
during the 20 second pause. I have deselected the option to connect to the
Internet. I have taken media out of my drives (ie. dvd, removable media). I
feel like it's searching for something and then timing out. Why? What?

With Windows Media Player my default media player, I want it to be fast and
do just that. It seems like it's always trying to download something or
connect to something...even with these options de-selected.

While on the subject, with my XP I had some media player tools like
crossfading. Why aren't these included in Ultimate??? I paid enough money
for this....

My bad, I found the cross-fader in the 'old-school' menues. However, this
app drags while moving around in the library.


"Mike Benton" <msnewsgroups@michaelbenton.com> wrote in message
news:C43DF7B7-9362-47A3-A655-A9216216D4D9@microsoft.com...
>I have about 3500 tracks in media player. It seems to load right away, but
>I can't do anything beyond the initial screen that comes up. In my case,
>the last screen I used was an artist view of my library. If I use the
>scrollbar or click a letter to jump to it doesn't move for about 20
>seconds.
>
> I'd like to say that it's just media player in general but I had media
> player on my XP laptop and didn't have any problems. I had the latest
> version. Now I have a 64-bit Vista Ultimate laptop with Centrino Duo 2.0
> and it runs slow. While looking at my performance monitor, I see nothing
> going on. In the title bar of the application it even says, "Not
> Responding" during the 20 second pause. I have deselected the option to
> connect to the Internet. I have taken media out of my drives (ie. dvd,
> removable media). I feel like it's searching for something and then timing
> out. Why? What?
>
> With Windows Media Player my default media player, I want it to be fast
> and do just that. It seems like it's always trying to download something
> or connect to something...even with these options de-selected.
>
> While on the subject, with my XP I had some media player tools like
> crossfading. Why aren't these included in Ultimate??? I paid enough money
> for this....

On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 10:36:57 -0500, "Mike Benton"
<msnewsgroups@michaelbenton.com> wrote:

>I have about 3500 tracks in media player. It seems to load right away, but I
>can't do anything beyond the initial screen that comes up. In my case, the
>last screen I used was an artist view of my library. If I use the scrollbar
>or click a letter to jump to it doesn't move for about 20 seconds.
>
>I'd like to say that it's just media player in general but I had media
>player on my XP laptop and didn't have any problems. I had the latest
>version. Now I have a 64-bit Vista Ultimate laptop with Centrino Duo 2.0 and
>it runs slow. While looking at my performance monitor, I see nothing going
>on. In the title bar of the application it even says, "Not Responding"
>during the 20 second pause. I have deselected the option to connect to the
>Internet. I have taken media out of my drives (ie. dvd, removable media). I
>feel like it's searching for something and then timing out. Why? What?
>
>With Windows Media Player my default media player, I want it to be fast and
>do just that. It seems like it's always trying to download something or
>connect to something...even with these options de-selected.
>
>While on the subject, with my XP I had some media player tools like
>crossfading. Why aren't these included in Ultimate??? I paid enough money
>for this....

Media Player is a little bloated. It tries, but often it tries to do
too much. Actually I like some of the bells and whistles like creating
thumnails of DVD covers. But there are flaws. I have some old
collections and Media Player if you let it will sniff around on the
web and try to find a appropriate pictures. Some time is finds a good
match, other times it links to a thumnail that isn't even close.

As far as the not responding message it literally means that. Usually
when Media Player hangs it was/is trying to open a file, often to
create or access a thumnail and for a host of reasons tries, but can't
quite manage it. Instead of trying once or twice, it keeps trying
unlike other applications that do similar things and if they try and
fail to open a particular file, they are "smart" enough to skip over
that file and go to the next one. Don't you wish Windows was that
smart? I sure do.

How is media playback on your system? Does it freeze up also? Yeah, WMP11
is pretty slow on Vista even in comparison with WMP11 on XP. I've noticed
that my total CPU usage is 3 times to 5 times higher on Vista when playing
music than WMP11 on XP. A small amount of this is caused by mfpmp.exe,
(DRM) which utilizes some of the CPU to monitor the songs, and then a much
larger chunk actually comes from DWM, a process for Aero, but why does the
CPU usage for DWM go way up when WMP11 is running, I don't know... Back to
mfpmp.exe, I've always complained about it, and it crashes a lot on my
computer when the songs are changing, which causes WMP11 to stall for a few
moments. It's kind of annoying. You are correct though that WMP11 loads a
long list of songs way quicker than it does on XP, but everything else on
WMP11 is considerably slower, so I'm a bit disappointed with WMP11 on Vista
in general.
"Mike Benton" <msnewsgroups@michaelbenton.com> wrote in message
news:C43DF7B7-9362-47A3-A655-A9216216D4D9@microsoft.com...
>I have about 3500 tracks in media player. It seems to load right away, but
>I can't do anything beyond the initial screen that comes up. In my case,
>the last screen I used was an artist view of my library. If I use the
>scrollbar or click a letter to jump to it doesn't move for about 20
>seconds.
>
> I'd like to say that it's just media player in general but I had media
> player on my XP laptop and didn't have any problems. I had the latest
> version. Now I have a 64-bit Vista Ultimate laptop with Centrino Duo 2.0
> and it runs slow. While looking at my performance monitor, I see nothing
> going on. In the title bar of the application it even says, "Not
> Responding" during the 20 second pause. I have deselected the option to
> connect to the Internet. I have taken media out of my drives (ie. dvd,
> removable media). I feel like it's searching for something and then timing
> out. Why? What?
>
> With Windows Media Player my default media player, I want it to be fast
> and do just that. It seems like it's always trying to download something
> or connect to something...even with these options de-selected.
>
> While on the subject, with my XP I had some media player tools like
> crossfading. Why aren't these included in Ultimate??? I paid enough money
> for this....

Interesting...

Yes, I installed WMP 11 on XP Pro SP2 and the darned thing was always trying
to connect to some site that wanted to sell me something.

It was a CPU hog too -- and slow.

If it's even worse on Vista I want no part of that.

Thanks for the information.

DSH

"Travis King" <Anonymous@none.com> wrote in message
news:uRPc6HoXHHA.4612@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

> How is media playback on your system? Does it freeze up also? Yeah,
> WMP11 is pretty slow on Vista even in comparison with WMP11 on XP. I've
> noticed that my total CPU usage is 3 times to 5 times higher on Vista when
> playing music than WMP11 on XP. A small amount of this is caused by
> mfpmp.exe, (DRM) which utilizes some of the CPU to monitor the songs, and
> then a much larger chunk actually comes from DWM, a process for Aero, but
> why does the CPU usage for DWM go way up when WMP11 is running, I don't
> know... Back to mfpmp.exe, I've always complained about it, and it
> crashes a lot on my computer when the songs are changing, which causes
> WMP11 to stall for a few moments. It's kind of annoying. You are correct
> though that WMP11 loads a long list of songs way quicker than it does on
> XP, but everything else on WMP11 is considerably slower, so I'm a bit
> disappointed with WMP11 on Vista in general.