Windows Media Player hogging the CPU

My computer is running Windows 7, 64 bit. Every now and then, particularly when I need the computer to do something processor-intensive such as gaming, photo editing or other, Windows Media Player decides to hog anywhere from 50% to 100% of the processor capacity for anywhere from a couple to twenty-thirty minutes. I don’t use Windows Media Player for anything at all, and I would prefer if it would simply sit there and be ignored like a well behaved bit of totally useless software.

Looking in Task Manager, these two singled themselves out as very CPU-hungry, taking up 50-100% between them:

• wmpnetwk.exe
• wmpshare.exe

I found a working solution that suggested disabling three WMP-related services.

1. Open the Start menu, right-click on Computer and select Manage
2. Go into Services and Applications, and then Services
3. Locate the following services:
   • Windows Media Center Receiver Service
   • Window Media Service Scheduling Service
   • Window Media Player Network Sharing Service
4. For each of those services, in turn, do as follows:
   • Right-click on the service’s name and select Properties
   • For Startup type select Disabled
   • Click OK
5. Close the Computer Management window

After I did this, my computer has been far better behaved. The ultimate step would probably be to uninstall Windows Media Player completely (or rather disable it, as I don’t think it can be fully removed from Windows, much like Internet Explorer), but I like to keep it around in the unlikely event that I might find myself in need of it.

References:

• Window Media Player.exe using 100% of CPU and Memory at hp.com
• How do I uninstall WMP 12? on answers.microsoft.com