Stop wmpenc.exe from Hogging CPU/Disk
For the past few weeks, my system running Windows Vista Media Center has been a bit sick. At seemingly random times, the hard drive would start crunching away abnormally. Upon further investigation, I discovered that a process known as wmpenc.exe was taking as much CPU as it could get (near 100%). After a bit of digging for information on issues with this process and Windows Media Center, I finally figured out that it was just Windows Media Player trying to be a bit too helpful.
From time to time, I synchronize my portable media player with Windows Media Center / Windows Media Player. My sync list includes, among other things, all of the TV I’ve recorded in the past week. I believe that wmpenc.exe was actually transcoding the recordings and caching them so that my next sync would be faster. There are two disadvantages to this: First, the cache size was set to 15GB, which is a lot of space on my measly 160GB drive. Second, the process ran at times when the system was not idle and affected the performance of Media Center. Fortunately, disabling caching is fairly simple, provided you know where to look.
The first step is to get to the devices tab in Windows Media Player 11. Do this by opening Windows Media Player and right-clicking near the top of the window. In the menu that appears, go to Tools -> Options… and click the Devices tab in the options dialog that appears:
Next, Advanced… button near the bottom of the dialog window. You should see this pop up:
Now, it should be pretty self-explanatory at this point. I unchecked Allow video files to convert in the background, changed the Amount of disk space to use to 5GB, and clicked Delete Files to, well, delete the files. You may want to customize the settings a bit. I just wanted the damn thing turned off for the time being. It’s definitely important that you complete this procedure while logged in as the primary Windows Media Center user, if you have one. However, I recommend you do this for each and every user on the system.
Happy MCE-ing!
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Themocracy
yes, finally the solution where i have been looking for a long time. many thx.
hello,
thx a lot !!!!!!!!!!!!
Me too thanks
Legendary man, you’re a life saver + cpu saver too!
thanks a million, if my farm ever gets run over again by ravenous pigs your the first to call, ms doesn’t know how lucky they are that the internet is here with all its ‘open’ work and discussion, other wise some of their products would make pc’s and the internet unusable
Thanks a lot for this tip
Thank-You-So-Much…I have been looking everywhere to find something on this…The helper hogs all my CPU and I was getting sick of going into Task Manager to switch it off…I sleep with my PC on and the noise when it (out of no-where) decided to start converting would keep me awake…You have saved my sanity =)
Yeah!!! Thanks a lot, you’re so “GROSO” as we said in Argentina.
Dude that was the smartest thing I have heard all day
Thanks so much! This was so helpful….
Thanks alot mate, u helped me pretty much =)
I love YOU!!!!!!!
thanks soooo much
YEA!!! WOO HOO! you rock buddy, thank you and may your kids be as super as you
Yes, this worked on my Vista lappy – many thanks!
I am having Mediaplayer 9.0, but in this Advanced option not available. How i can resolve the problem. Kinldy help me..
[...] easy find: http://iboyd.net/index.php/2008/04/0…gging-cpudisk/ Google, so simple.. *hint* [...]
Thanks a lot!
My laptop was reaching 78°C with this bloody process…
Now the temp is going down, as well as the fan!
Thanks again!
Thanks your more helpful than microsoft. I have been looking for a solution for weeks.