Windows 7 has High CPU Usage and slow performance

Anonymous
2009-11-18T04:59:29+00:00

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.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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Anonymous
2010-01-02T19:29:42+00:00

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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  1. Anonymous
    2010-01-15T17:57:20+00:00

    If you installed Win 7 over Vista, that may have been causing you slow performance.

    Suggestion: Clean install with upgrade media.

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-01-15T17:34:01+00:00

    I have had the same problem. It can be as a result of a corrupted media file as addressed in an earlier reply. Microsoft has a hotfix for this at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976417. I hope this helps. It helped me, but did not completely reuce the cpu usage.

    Another thing to try if it does not fix the problem or only partially redues the cpu usage is to run msconfig, go to the startup tab and click the disable all button and then restart the computer. If the problem goes away, you can then selectively re-enable each startup item in mcconfig to identify the troublesome item. Just click the start button and type msconfig in the search box to get started.

    Good luck!

    sb

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-01-15T15:57:52+00:00

    Hallo peter,

    follow my prev linked guide. What do you see?

    André

    "A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-01-14T00:21:19+00:00

    I have the exact same problem as well with flash. I have two PC's at home however, one has the problem and one doesn't. My laptop doesn't have the problem, but my Media Center PC does have the problem. I am running the current flash  10.0.42.34

    I have posted the problem in a few locations to try get an answer - Initially I thought it was just a problem with a specific flash website, which is where my adobe post starts

    http://forums.adobe.com/thread/528797?tstart=0

    This is what I have posted to the sevenforums website - My laptop is running ATI Catalyst 9.11 Driver and My Media Center Machine is running Catalyst 9.12 (I have tried 8.12 ,9.2 ,9.9 ,9.10 ,9.11 and now 9.12 drivers under Windows 7)

    http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/14976-flash-video-playing-sound-generally-high-cpu-usag-3.html#post503770

    I have the exact same problem on my Media Center machine, my laptop doesn't have an issue. Video playback goes CPU bound with streaming flash video sites (youtube and australian broadcaster abc (www.abc.net.au/iview)).

    I can play back the video stream fine for a brief period (HD videos normally about 30sec - 1min, Standard def videos about 3-5minutes), then all of a sudden GPU support gets turned off and the flash video becomes CPU bound. Eg, I can be watching a video at a nice 25-30fps rate, then when the gpu gets turned off it drops down to 3-9fps.

    I can play back Blu-Ray discs fine on my Media Center machine and recorded HDTV from media center, 1080p H264 video and 1080i Mpeg2 video, with cpu usage of only 30-40%.

    My hardware specs on my media center machine (which has the problem)

    CPU: P4 3.0 Ghz

    Motherboard: Intel i965 chipset

    Ram: 2Gb

    OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

    Video Card: ATI HD 2600 PRO 512MB (AGP)

    My laptop (which works fine)

    CPU: P4 3.0 Ghz

    Motherboard: Sis 648 Chipset

    Ram: 1.5Gb

    OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

    Video Card: ATI 9600 Mobility 128 MB Ram

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