WMP freezing comp.

[Dionysus]

This is a weird question and I'm sure a rather dumb one but I don't know EVERYTHINg about computers so instead of spending a hundred bux I thought someone on here might be able to help.

so this problem is just recent as of yesterday. when I load music files into WMP9/10 it will play fine for a couple minutes then all of a sudden start to periodically freeze as if its a cd skipping. But the timing will be the same for every "skip," play 10 secs freeze for a sec, play 3 secs freeze for a sec, play for 10 again and its just this loop. I have no other processes running that would take up ANY MEMORY.

I downloaded iTunes and it seemed to work fine with my music but you can't just go into music folder and play you have download EACH FREAKIN' FOLDER INTO THE LIBRARY so I gave that up quick as I have A LOT OF MUSIC.

I've run virus scan in safe mode cuz once the freezing starts it continues to do it even when you close WMP. But if I don't run WMP at all to begin with the computer runs like a dream, like SUPA FAST!

If anyone has any suggestions that might be able to fix the problem I can probably wire some money for a beer ;)

Thanks ppl.

[communist]

Dunno but the standard routine with Microsoft programs is to reinstall them or search their Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=0).
You might also want to check this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=91661) about WMP freezing.
Make sure your DirectX installation and other drives (sound / VGA etc.) are up to date.

If that doesnt fix your problem I recommend simply not using WMP9/10. Winamp (http://www.winamp.com/) has a fully functional Media Library and it doenst eat up that much resources as WMP ;)

[Dionysus]

thanks bro I will try that...

I just switched to winamp and everything seems to be working like there was never a problem...

does M$ ever produce any material that slowly doesn't become junk... they are the equivalent to what sony is in the electronics industry.

thanks again for the reply.

[samab]

It seems you have some sort of memory leak on your mp3 decoder.

Since you are in the doom9 forum, it's a 99.9% certainty that you have downloaded some sort of ffdshow (or even worse various codec packs). Some codec packs contain a hacked version of fraunhofer mp3 decoder --- the hack version doesn't do crossfading. Some software such as winamp may contain their own mp3 decoder.

If you install ffdshow, WMP will use ffdshow's mp3 decoder (from the open source mp3lib project) --- instead of Microsoft's Fraunhofer mp3 decoder.

I learned it the hardway --- when I use Microsoft's Photo Story 3 to make slide shows with background music, PS3 would crash every single time. The whole problem went away when I disabled mp3lib and switch back to Microsoft's own mp3 decoder.

More basic information on WMP:

http://www.nwlink.com/~zachd/pss/pss.html