Windows Media Player 11 running very slow

My cousin is having a Dell XPS 410 running with Windows XP SP2 and Windows Media Player 11. Problem we facing is any audio/video played in WMP is very choppy since last couple of days. And during this my RAM keeps fluctuating as well up and down randomly by 20-50 MB every second. Computer is about 1.5 years old and I never had this problem before.

Infact whenever WMP is running, my system gets slow, even alt+tab responds very slow. When I close media player everything comes back to its normal condition, even Ram fluctuation stops. Any idea what could be the problem and how can we fix it? Thank you for your helps.

It is very difficult to find the cause of the problem by just reading your post. Well you will need to do one thing. Run any video again in Media Player, keep it running and open up Task Manager by Ctrl+Alt+Del. Click process tab and sort it depending on their memory usage. Here note the top 5 applications using the highest memory resource and reply back.

It could be or it could not be the Media Player. There are various other background apps running. One of them also can be the cause of problem.

Even I was having problem with Windows Media Player 11 on Vista where it use to take more than a minute for stating videos or switching from one track to another (SLOW RESPONSE). Finally I managed to fix it with the following steps:

• Click Start, and type sound.
• Click Sound.
• In the Sound window, click Speakers/Headphones and then Properties.
• In the Speakers/Headphones Properties window, click the Enhancements tab.
• Click to check the Disable All Enhancements checkbox.
• Click Apply and then OK.
• In the Speakers/Headphones Properties window, click Apply and then OK.
• The Sound window closes.

I have the same issue. started about 3 days ago. out of the blue, and i dont even have to have anything else running, just wmp alone is all choppy, pressing "next" is now delayed, scrolling the list is sketchy in frame rate. I'm quite confident it's not pc as i play high end 3d gaming with no problems and other music players run fine.

My specs are:

Windows XP Professional
Version 2002
Service Pack 3

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU
Q9400 @2.66GHz
2.67GHz, 3.25 GB of RAM


Ive had this pc for 3 months, and it runs fine, only windows media player 11 is being a complete nuisance with its choppiness, delayed responses and slow loading, (takes about 10-15 seconds for the song to start) (clicking next song and ur lookin at 20-25 seconds)id be ever greatful to get this issue fixed as i like to use WMP.

Other notes, WMP when i first load it is fine, after i play 1 song the slowness and other such begin, ive also noticed when i close wmp to try again, the second load time will take ages, i found wen i closed it the first time it was still in Task Manager, so i close it from Task Manager after closing it from the program aswell and retry, and it just happens again, play 1 song, back to sqaure one. I also dont use WMP while doing anything vigorous such as gaming, so it's not a conflict in that area i assume.

Thankyou in advance.

Sigh, I take it these threads aren't very active.