Is Windows Media Player(v11) on vista slow for anyone?

I have vista basic and windows media player(v11) is slow as crap.



after the window appears it'll take about 20 seconds to load the media that's available(just to get it to a point where it'll respond. then after I select something it lags for about 10-20 seconds and then a 'media changing...' message appears at the bottom left and it'll be about 20 seconds to play that file. so from start to wmp playing something takes up to a minute.



wmp11 on my xp puter(512mb hyperthreaded) blows wmp11 on my vista laptop(gig ram amd 64 x2) out of the water.



is there something like some setting or something I can change to make things run faster? I like wmp11 and don't want to dl winamp.

 

Its hard to say, mine runs fairly slow as well. My laptop is just too slow. 1.6ghz Turion x64 w/ 1.5gb of ram. What are your system specs?



On a side note, anyone annoyed by the fact that WMP does not buffer songs? I will play a song and when the cpu is doing other things it gets choppy. I mean come on MS, even iTunes buffers songs.

 

whats wrong with the current design? I like it.

 

What do you mean by "come on"? I'm 100% sure that the largest software manufacturer in the world knows all about buffering.

You have some strange problems (I read some of your other posts). For example playing a song and things getting choppy? I just tried... started Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Outlook almost at the same time and don't notice any choppyness, not even while using winrar or quickpar. I don't know... am I just lucky, because I don't seem to have any of your problems. Strange...

 

hello all

i was reading this thread and have similar problems

many movies on hard drive and when i try to open it it takes up to 30 seconds and than

sometimes "media player not responding"??

running vista home on brand new gateway notebook





any help??



and thanks

 

Sounds to me as if the by now too common issue of people running Vista on machines that barely meet the requirements has raised it ugly head again believe me if you tried to use WMP11 on a machine running XP with a 250MHz CPU and 64MB of RAM you would have media issues as well. Just b/c your machine meets the minimum requirements to run Vista does not mean it will run it well. No OS or the programs associated with it will run well if the system resources are taxed already.



Just a thought here people have you ever thought of NOT bogging down your HDD with a ton of huge media files or maybe a little system maintenance i.e. defrag,clean-up,registry repair? I am forever getting requests from friends for help with their "slow" PC only to find out their system is clogged with invalid registries,temp files etc. People could save themselves a lot of headaches with routine system maintenance those tools are on your PC for a reason!

 

Unless you have very fastest machine, or don't ever watch videos, just give up on bloated WMP under Vista and use something like freeware VLC player (videolan.org).



I'm gonna keep searching for tuning options because there is simply no excuse for WMP to be that slow when VLC can play exact same videos as fast as it did under XP.

 

I have the same issue with WMP on Vista. It takes around 15-20sec to load the media after the application is open. I have a pretty top of the line laptop also.



core 2 duo 2.33ghz

4 gigs of ram

7200 rpm HD

7950 gtx 512mb



its not the computer its vista and WMP 11. I don't know how to fix it but it's sure driving me crazy :w00t:

 

That's just ridiculous i don't have as you say the "very fastest machine" and it takes maybe 2 seconds tops usually less than that for WMP 11 to load on my computer and less than that for it to load a file be it a mp3,MPEG,AVI etc. I don't know what is going on with everyone having these issues admittedly WMP 11 is bloated and there are definitly better,sleeker media players out there but i stand by my statment that routine system maintenence would save people a lot of headaches.

 

After my last post i thought i would test how WMP 11 performed on my PC with Opera,Firefox,Slimbrowser,Yahoo messy,Faststone Image resizer,Limewire and playing a Operation Ivy mp3 on GOM Player all running at the same time the browsers loading pages on my crappy dial-up connection Yahoo messy signing in and batch resizing 12 assorted photos and did the the old very precise,scientific 1 Mississippi 2 Mississippi etc. count (for you slower ones the precise,scientific part is a joke and not a very good one) anyway it took not quite 2 counts for WMP 11 to fully load and once i clicked on my AVI of Monty Python and the Holy Grail it took less than a 1 Mississippi for it to start playing i let it play while closing and opening the various programs and windows with no noticible performance problems in any of the applications including WMP 11, to quote jdonner "am i just lucky", i doubt it. I also keep my media files on my slave drive so of course not having my master bogged down with a ton of media helps! Just because your computer shipped with Vista does not mean it or the associated applications will work well computer companies are motivated by money and Microsoft=$$$. Another thing if your bought a computer from Dell,Gateway or someone like that a massproduced machine you can bet that every Windows service possible is turned on these often unnecessary "services " can majorly impact your machines all around performance.

 

I have the exact same problem!

I went looking for solutions and can find abs none! Its terrible how slow it is. It only happens when you are playing a song then click to play a different one. It takes 15 to 20 seconds to load it up.

This is definately not right. My laptop is brand new SONY VAIO 1.6MHz intel 2 duo processor, 2G RAM, Like what more could you want to play a smple program...

I previously had an XP laptop and it ran the songs perfect!!!

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM???????????????

 

There is a simple fix.

Right mouse click the "speaker" icon next to the clock

Click on "Playback devices"

Click on the "speaker" properties

Click on the enhacement tab

Disable all enhacements

Done

It worked for me.

 

does "add to library when played" option enabled? if not, try enabling it, it makes a difference on mine, i tried to turn it off since, i dont want to add items into the library automatically, and it turned out slower, i re enabled it again, and i tried adding around 1000+ songs and the perfomance doesn't degrade

 

I'm with Travis, I have no issues with WMP11 and getting the same response times, tv tuner running, multiple web pages open does not slow WMP startup times, virtually instant with nearly 15,000 music tracks.

Intel E6600 C2D, 3Gig Ram, WDSATAII 320 Gig Hdd, onboard graphics, Intel DG965RY Mb.

 

DON'T BOG DOWN YOUR MASTER HDD WITH ALOT OF APPS AND CONTENT! GET AN EXTERNAL HDD AND DO SOME SYSTEM MAINTENANCE AT LEATS ONCE A MONTH PEOPLE! SHEESH!:crazy:

Toshiba Satellite P105-S9337

Core Duo2 T7200 2.0 Ghz 2.0 Ghz

2046 MB 32 Bit OPS 200GB HD

Vista Home Premium

 

I had the same problem this took care of it:

http://www.windowsvistamagazine.com.../windows-media-player-11-problems-solved.html

 

My "new" Dell Insprion laptop E1405 had a similar delay in WMP. I re-fromatted and re-installed Vista (for other reasons) and now the delay is gone...WMP works well.

I know reformatting and re-installing the OS is a drastic step just to get rid of a media player delay, but it might work.

 

Yeah make sure your hd is defragged, and keep opening and closing wmp. Defragging will enable vista to read and load wmp from the hd faster, opening and closing will make vista relise it a commonly used program, and will preload most of wmp into the memory when on idle, this way wmp should load up almost instantly.

 

I'm going to go ahead and say that the problem most likely lies in your machine. I just got a new desktop which has about 3GB of ram and dual core CPU, it runs WMP11 way faster than XP ever did. My laptop with a 1.6Ghz Turion and 1.5GB of ram has a hard time producing visualizations at the correct framrate and will get choppy audio every once in a while under load. I think it comes down to your cpu, nothings wrong with WMP.



The link which was offered above by another member, entitles turning of the enhancements which helps prove the point that it's the machine which is the problem. Turning the enhancements off is going to free more processing power. Great link BTW.

 

The easiest solution to all these problems, go to majorgeeks.com or Google for alternative real or quicktime players, they both can play those files and use the older version of media player classic,(which they also install)once that's in make it default media player and watch the difference, it plats realmedia, quicktime, avi, mpeg all flavours etcrovided of course you got the codecs it will play anything, loads very fast.

Job done.