Windows 7 has High CPU Usage and slow performance

Anonymous

Hello all,

I've searched the forums, but was unable to find anything relevant. I recently upgraded to Windows 7 from Vista. It was running fine for about a week then all of a sudden everything started running very slow. I checked the the processes tab in task manager and I am constantly running at 70-80% CPU usage. I think this is very high considering the computer is only a few months old. It seems like others are having this problem as well, but no real solutions.

I have turned off file indexing as well as disabled the HD audio device.

Please help!

Here are my hardware specs:

AMD 9550 Quad-Core

64-bit

6GB Ram

Thank you in advance for your help. I am ready to toss this thing from my second story window.

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Anonymous

I think the answer might be the Windows Media Player and Windows Media Network Sharing Services as zxypher suggested. The fix for that is to adjust were the Windows Media Player services search for media files.

It seems to be a bad problem for me as well upgrading from Vista to Windows 7. The default search location for media is set to C:\Users\ instead of down in the My Music folders.

Go into Media Player. From the menu -> File -> Manage libraries -> select each library (music, video, pictures, recorded tv [if you have]) and check the paths that it is managing and make sure it is not too close to the root of the C: drive. For example, it should be something like c:\users\Jim\Music and c:\users\Public\Music BUT NOT **** c:\users as they will cause the whole directory tree to be re-indexed over and over (when you surf the web or change any files in your profile).

If you have multiple users who login to the computer, you may need to repeat the process for each user if all users have added managed folders which are actively changing on a regular basis.

If this is your issue and you do it correctly, then the high CPU should drop in minutes (or seconds down to nothing).

This is the CORRECT way to adjust the WMNSS/WMPNetwk.exe process issues.

A little more information can be found here:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/2fe4901b-2eaf-4a99-b487-e6a6213b10b3/

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253 additional answers

Anonymous

2011-07-21T13:05:38+00:00

Event Viewer reports?
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Anonymous

2011-07-21T09:46:42+00:00

I've followed the "advice" from Microsoft answers and still have typical Wndows Media Player CPU usage of 45% to 50%. This level of usage occurs when I'm not playing an media on the computer. As for actions taken so far, I've ensured that the music libraries only actually include music instead of entire drives. Additionally, I've turned off every networking/dowloading option I could find. I did one clean install of the operating system only to have the problem recur within a few weeks. I'm using Windows 7 64-bit with Windows Media Player 12. Does Microsoft plan to release an update to the Windows Media Player which will fix the issue as it appears to be a long standing and generic problem?
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Anonymous

2011-07-10T15:48:05+00:00

the dll was updated by Windows update. Here are properties:

It and some others with HAL in name were updated by Windows Update on 5/17/2011.

I used resource manager to see what was consuming CPU and identified this dll and the one about unserviced requests as the culprits (after sleep, not before). Then I checked version, thinking maybe I needed to update it, and saw that it HAD been updated (by MS) right when my problems started. I already read the link you provided - that is how I knew what HAL stood for, and saw that it would indeed be a function used in awakening from sleep.

I'll try the Event Viewer recommendation when I get the chance. Meanwhile, I am using the workaround of not sleeping.
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Anonymous

2011-07-10T13:23:25+00:00

Try rebuilding the Search Index.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/17880-index-rebuild.html

I suggest you allow the computer to sleep. When you resume note the time and check Event Viewer for reports.

How did your halmacpi. dll come to be updated? What made you pick on that driver?

This link gives information about the driver:

http://dll.paretologic.com/detail.php/halmacpi

It is implicated in Power Management. The BIOS is relevant. A lot of updates are issued because of sleep / hibernation problems. However, I checked and you do have the latest BIOS for the motherboard. What version of halmacpi. dll do you have?
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