Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service won’t stay on Manual start-up

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Hi folks,

I recently started using Windows Media Center on my PC (Lenovo Thinkpad T400, 4GB memory, Win7/64) with an Xbox 360 as an extender so I could look at my photos on the plasma screen in the den. Works fine.

But now whenever I start my PC, the service wmpnetwk.exe starts up automatically (after a short delay) and hogs 2.5GB of memory and 50% of the CPU, with nothing else running. I’ve gone to Services Manager and changed its Start-Up Type to Manual, clicked Apply and that looks OK – the cursor stops rotating, and I can click OK to go back to the main screen – except that it goes into “Stopping” mode, never comes out and doesn’t relinquish its death grip on the memory and CPU. If I go back into its Properties and check the Start-Up Type, it says Manual, although the Status is still “Stopping”. Even after another 20 minutes.

But I reboot the PC, after a minute or so it starts up again automatically anyway. I go back to Services Manager and sure enough, its Start-up status has reverted to Automatic (Delayed) once again. I’ve run through this process twice now and it has no effect.

How can I kill this beast? It’s really dragging my PC down.

Thanks in advance

Jon

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A Google Searchshows many links to this and how to resolve the problem.

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Thanks, Ted; most of the suggestions in your search results were the same ones I’d already found, i.e. suggestions to disable the service completely. I don’t want to do that because I use the service to view pictures remotely through a network-attached Xbox 360. I wanted to set it to Manual start so that it would only be in use when I needed it, but apparently Microsoft doesn’t allow that setting (so why is it on the menu?).

One response led me down another avenue, though, which is that wmpnetwk.exe may be working just fine and be hung up on a corrupt .avi file. This link (http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-100326.html) led me to this site to download DivXRepair (http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/DivXRepair-Download-14597.html). My next step is to try that, on the basis that it’s better to fix the problem than shoot the messenger. If it doesn’t help, though, the messenger’s a goner.

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UPDATE: I ran every .avi file I could find through DivXRepair – no trouble found, so wmpnetwk.exe is now Disabled. I guess I’ll need to re-enable it whenever I want to watch anything on the remote Xbox-linked display, which is a bit of a pain. Thanks for the help, anyway.

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Have you tried going to ‘System Configuration’ in ‘start up’ tab check media player/ media center are not set to start with windows. If it is untick the box. then media player / media center should not start with windows.

UPDATE: I ran every .avi file I could find through DivXRepair – no trouble found, so wmpnetwk.exe is now Disabled. I guess I’ll need to re-enable it whenever I want to watch anything on the remote Xbox-linked display, which is a bit of a pain. Thanks for the help, anyway.

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Thanks for the thought, Clive, but it’s not even listed in the Start tab on msconfig. I keep a regular eye on that list to make sure unnecessary apps don’t start automatically – Apple seems to be the worst offender, with every update resetting itself to start with Windows – and Media Center/Player aren’t even listed.

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