# Windows Media Player Help Needed.



## Alas (Jun 18, 2006)

Have a strange one on my PC on Windows Media Player and Media Center. This only happens when playing music tracks from the hard drive that I have loaded. DVD & video on hard drive plays fine.

Plays fine for 2 - 3 mins the the music stops, starts, stutters for a couple of secs and the processor goes up to 50%+ load. Then it goes back to normal play for a few mins and does it again. I can play the music no problem on Real Player so files are obviously ok.

As its a Dell PC I contacted them wondering if the processor was too slow (2.66ghz Dual core with 2gb RAM - hard drive 120GB free) but they said no. All they could come up with was a codec was corrupt and I would have to reload the whole of Windows Vista







Thats a non starter so are they talking sense or a load of rubbish. Only reason I bother is I have a big collection of music on the PC and WMP is the best layout for my albums. If there is a better free player I'd use it.

Any help

Cheers

Alasdair


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## Alas (Jun 18, 2006)

Just turned off all my virus scan, firewall etc etc to see if it helped but no - as usual 2 - 3 mins in the track stutters and big load goes on the CPU for a couple of secs and then all ok again. For another 2-3 mins.

Alasdair


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## pugster (Nov 22, 2004)

try this, type 'dxdiag' in the run box (no quotes) ,then click the sound tab and move the sound hardeware acceleration down a notch (if this doesnt work try 2 notches).

* its not a corrupt codec, if it was it wouldnt play in anything, things like this are usually hardware driver conflicts ,if it works ,turning down the sound acceleration wont hurt anything ,sometimes i have to do it to make games 'compatible' on my system.


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## thunderbolt (May 19, 2007)

I have the same problems on my laptop running Vista home premium. I don't think it's a corrupt codec. I think it's vista slowing itself down as it does use an awful lot of resources. I have downloaded the K-Lite codec pack (freebie) and it has a media player in the package which is very good. Google for the vista compatible k-lite pack and download it. It has all the up to date codecs. It may work.


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## Alas (Jun 18, 2006)

pugster said:


> try this, type 'dxdiag' in the run box (no quotes) ,then click the sound tab and move the sound hardeware acceleration down a notch (if this doesnt work try 2 notches).


Did this - clicked the sound tab but it just gives details and a no problem report. There are no changes can be made to hardware accel on this page

Cheers

Alasdair


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## Alas (Jun 18, 2006)

thunderbolt said:


> I have the same problems on my laptop running Vista home premium. I don't think it's a corrupt codec. I think it's vista slowing itself down as it does use an awful lot of resources. I have downloaded the K-Lite codec pack (freebie) and it has a media player in the package which is very good. Google for the vista compatible k-lite pack and download it. It has all the up to date codecs. It may work.


I'll give it a go.

Cheers

Alasdair


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## pugster (Nov 22, 2004)

in dxdiag under the sound tab there should be a sound acceleration bar under direct x features like this pic, ignore the no problems bit and move the slider down


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## Alas (Jun 18, 2006)

pugster said:


> in dxdiag under the sound tab there should be a sound acceleration bar under direct x features like this pic, ignore the no problems bit and move the slider down


Page is the same without the bar that is on yours. Just has the info at the top to the no problems box at the bottom.

Alasdair


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## Alas (Jun 18, 2006)

When I went in to change it manually I got a message saying my display driver does not allow changes to hardware accel.

Alasdair


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## pugster (Nov 22, 2004)

Alas said:


> When I went in to change it manually I got a message saying my display driver does not allow changes to hardware accel.
> 
> Alasdair


ok goto control panel, open sound and audio devices ,click on the audio tab >under sound playback click advanced >performance and take the hardware acceleration down a few notches from there.


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## Alas (Jun 18, 2006)

pugster said:


> Alas said:
> 
> 
> > When I went in to change it manually I got a message saying my display driver does not allow changes to hardware accel.
> ...


Opened sounds>playback but no advanced option only configure and properties neither of which show hardware accel. When I ask it to play a video in Media Centerfrom the hard drive it plays no problem yet that must be more power hungry? I've downloaded Winamp now to play my music files. Thanks for the help anyway but Def. something wrong somewhere.

Alasdair


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

Here's my guess. And it is only a guess. The problem is Windows Media Player trying to connect to the Internet to download some info or other about the song / album / copyright, blah, blah, blah. It is an incredibly "chatty" application. Try going into the options and turning off all those that relate to getting info from the Internet and see if that makes a difference. If it doesn't help, you can always re-enable those options again if you like.


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## Alas (Jun 18, 2006)

rhaythorne said:


> Here's my guess. And it is only a guess. The problem is Windows Media Player trying to connect to the Internet to download some info or other about the song / album / copyright, blah, blah, blah. It is an incredibly "chatty" application. Try going into the options and turning off all those that relate to getting info from the Internet and see if that makes a difference. If it doesn't help, you can always re-enable those options again if you like.


Just tried that but no joy. It's related to the end of the track as it does it 20-30 sec before the track finishes as I've just been playing around and noticed this.

Thanks to all who tried to help.

WinAmp here I come









Alasdair


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## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

It's nothing to do with the processor is it?

XP had (has) problems with dual-core processors (there is a hotfix, but it didn't work for my company laptop). Not sure if Vista has a similar problem?

I read somewhere that you can disable a core to make it run as single-core. Would be interesting to know if you still had trouble running it in single core 'mode'. (And no, I've no idea how you would do that.)


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## Alas (Jun 18, 2006)

Who. Me? said:


> It's nothing to do with the processor is it?
> 
> XP had (has) problems with dual-core processors (there is a hotfix, but it didn't work for my company laptop). Not sure if Vista has a similar problem?
> 
> I read somewhere that you can disable a core to make it run as single-core. Would be interesting to know if you still had trouble running it in single core 'mode'. (And no, I've no idea how you would do that.)


I wondered at first if it was the processor but why would it run videos in WMP without problems but struggle with music. I give up now and am using Winamp

Alasdair


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