The odd bit

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is an enemy action.

Windows Vista: Long delay when switching songs in media player

There you are: Windows Media Player (WMP) running, all songs loaded in its library and you hit the ‘play’-button. It picks the wrong song and you click the ‘next’-button. Instead of starting the next song immediately, a pretty long pause follows the release of the button. As if there’s some artificial intelligence pondering if it should play the file. Rest assured, the song will start eventually. You can live with that for a couple of songs and then the mind starts asking questions. I don’t have to wait in Windows XP so why should I have to wait in its youngest sibling? And so the quest for a solution starts…

The pause is the most noticeable event, but it’s the result of something else: one of the svchost.exe processes loves the CPU and starts eating cycles. So it’s some Windows service causing all of this, but which one (for the unknowing: svchost.exe does a lot in Windows and there are multiple processes with that name)? Process Explorer to the rescue! And that nifty program told me the spike in CPU usage was caused by “svchost.exe -DcomLaunch”.

The fun isn’t over yet. That process is associated with two services: DCOM Server Process Launcher and Plug and Play. For the Vulcans among us, all logic stops there for a second. What do those two services have to do with WMP? The answer is provided by Vista’s new audio engine. The new engine supports several audio “enhancements”. But for the enhancements to work, the engine needs to determine if your hardware is up to the task. And when does it check that? Each time a sound output device is accessed. That’s pretty nice if you can do a hot swap of sound hardware, but I don’t see me doing that anytime soon. Anyways, it does provide us with the link to the correct service because checking hardware is done by the “Plug and Play” service.

One might think that deactivating each enhancement would solve the problem, but that’s wishful thinking. The configuration of the enhancements is located in the properties of the sound hardware. When opening the tab, I found out that no enhancements were active. Hmmm… so why does it check the hardware? Well, it does that in case you actually enable an enhancement. To completely stop the hardware checking, you have to tick the box labelled Disable all enhancements. As soon as you do that, Vista finally understands you don’t want to use them :-)

It took me quite some time to figure this out. I hope this post can save some time for those who experience the same problem.

Category: Microsoft, Vista
Tag: ,

130 Responses

  • linus says:

    Superb, thanks very very much

    Martin – instructions for dummies work like a dream

    27 July 2008 at 12:41

  • Free888 says:

    Follow up on #50′s comment:
    I have recently purchased a ATI 4850 to go with my 780G board, and I’m using onboard Realtek sound chip. Today I have updated my Realtek sound drivers, and I got this high CPU usage problem. I found that I need to disable the ATI HDMI device to fully fix the problem. Just my 2 cents, thanks all.

    6 August 2008 at 17:57

  • Rex says:

    Hey Hans,
    your a hero. This problem was annoying since the first Vista installation. You finally made my day.

    6 August 2008 at 19:16

  • Michael Giagnocavo says:

    Wow, thanks for the heads up here. I also found out that the delay went away if I got rid of mfpmp.exe (the lameass DRM junk WM uses, even if you don’t use DRM songs). On the downside, WMP won’t play WMA then (lame, since other players can handle it just fine). I guess this answers Larry Osterman’s question about “whats wrong with putting DRM in the system” :P .

    13 August 2008 at 18:58

  • jhukl says:

    I will nominate Hans for a nobel peace prize. The fix definitely stop alot of people from killing M$ engineers.

    14 August 2008 at 02:12

  • Chopper says:

    Top notch !! Worked a treat.

    Thanks man

    14 August 2008 at 23:09

  • Shah says:

    A simple thank-you is not enough for this solution. 100,000,000 thank yous!

    16 August 2008 at 17:08

  • paul says:

    You know if this is still get posts like a year after it’s post i think it need to be the standard wallpapper for vista. THank you very much.

    20 August 2008 at 00:12

  • Dolf says:

    There will still be a lot of people switching to Vista and they are all going to have the same problem, you have just got to know were to look.
    Thanks for that.

    22 August 2008 at 22:08

  • Stromi says:

    THANKS HANS !!!!
    also to Free888 you fixed the prob by me with disbling the HDMI device !

    rolf from 20-30 down to 2-3 cpu usage in idle

    greets from bavaria ;)

    5 September 2008 at 21:37

  • KING says:

    OH MY FUCKING GOD THANK YOU THAT WAS BULLSHIT TRYIN TO HAVE PARTIES AND WAITING 5 SECONDS BEFORE A SONG PLAYS GAY I LOVE YOU AND OWE YOU SEXUAL FAVORS

    9 September 2008 at 00:17

  • Fernando Rdgz says:

    MUCHISISISISISIMA GRACIAS ESTO ME AYUDO MUCHISISIMO YA NO SABIA NI QUE HACER ESTABA COMO LO COMO CON EL CPU AL 100% POR EL DICHOSO PROCESO ESE, Y SOLO TUBE QUE PASAR A UN CONTROLADOR ANTERIOR EL DRIVER DE SONIDO Y COMO NUEVA CPU AL 7% 10% DE 20 NO PASA THANK YOU SO MUCH DUDE!

    15 September 2008 at 18:44

  • pynn says:

    hmm..hope it may help to solve my problem…thanks for sharing ya….

    17 September 2008 at 11:15

  • Linda says:

    Hans
    Thank you for sorting out this very annoying problem
    it has driven me mad for months, m.s could’nt help
    but I knew someone out there would, thank you once again
    Linda

    1 October 2008 at 19:50

  • jan says:

    dankjewel!
    de oplossing die je hier in je blog voorstelt, helpt ook om de ‘song delay’ in Songbird (www.songbird.com) op te lossen!
    “svchost.exe -DcomLaunch” zorgde ook daar voor een verhoogd cpu-gebruik.

    os: vista sp1
    hardware: dell inspiron 6400 dual core 1.83ghz
    sounddriver: sigmatel high definition audio codec 6.10.0.5343

    10 October 2008 at 17:46

  • Yo says:

    Great job! Thanks!

    14 October 2008 at 13:53

  • Alex says:

    Hey, thx for the help. My problem was “fight” between ATI HDMI audio, Realtek High definition audio & SB-X-Fi Xtreme Audio. Only when I disabled ATI & Realtek from device manager, CPU was working on normal capacity. Your post inspired me to look more into the problem, now everything sounds perfect. Cheers m8!

    17 October 2008 at 18:44

  • MikeBlake says:

    Thank god you posted this.

    18 October 2008 at 16:11

  • Bill says:

    There is no enhancement tab.

    18 October 2008 at 18:59

  • Mathias says:

    Thank yoooouuuuuu !!!!
    Your solution has spare me a useless full reinstallation of Vista…

    For Bill : there is an enhancement tab, but you have to look in the speakers/helmet properties in the “Play” tab

    3 November 2008 at 14:18

  • Elyafi says:

    This has been going on with me for weeks now. DCOMLAUNCH has killed my Laptop… it has become a fire hazard because of the fan running full time!

    I tried your suggestion, didnt work for me… Also, I tried installing Vista SP1 thinking it might fix something, laptop crashed and I had to restore it to a previous point.,

    Any suggestions?

    10 November 2008 at 16:40

  • Kiy says:

    Thanks a lot, this helped me out a lot! I had the same with the audio enhancements and the ati hdmi audio conflict with realtek but it’s all good now :)

    13 November 2008 at 20:13

  • Dan says:

    Thanks so much – that as one of the most annoying features of WMP 11 and vista that I cold find. Your answer was an absolute god send! Keep up the great work:)

    15 November 2008 at 12:48

  • Daniel says:

    I’ve seen so many “thank yous” here, that it seems one more would go by unnoticeable. But still … thank you. This has helped me resolve two of my problems with Vista:
    1. Annoying flickering mouse cursor
    2. svchost.exe using a lot of my CPU

    The solution for both of these problems was disabling ATI HDMI Audio in Device Manager (Device Manager > Sound, video and game controllers > right click on ATI HDMI Audio > disable > restart computer). It seems that there is a conflict of some sort between ATI HDMI Audio drivers and Realtek drivers (I have ATI HD4670 video card and Gigabyte MA770DS3 motherboard with integrated Realtek audio).

    15 November 2008 at 23:57

  • Mike says:

    Finally! Thank you Nukemaster! I never would have guessed it was the HMDI audio!

    As Daniel said, this fixes a few problems, not just the CPU usage, but the flickering cursor and also the problem I had with dropdown boxes not staying open long enough to navigate. After correcting this, I love Vista 8x more!

    23 December 2008 at 05:11

  • ATI 4850 HD says:

    Free888, thanks for your tip. I just bought a Gateway FX quad core pc with ATI 4850 HD as well and is getting constant 16% cpu usage. After disable the HDMI audio in device manager I am back down to 0% now, thank you!

    31 December 2008 at 07:40

  • Amr says:

    Wow. I never thought that switching to the next song could be this fast

    25 January 2009 at 13:58

  • theropod-x says:

    Okay for those of you who have not solved this with the above i have the answer!

    It’s the ati hdmi sound driver. So if you don’t have an ati card in your box, it’s not the answer but after hours and hours of searching this finally solved it for me:

    right-click computer, select manage, device manager, expand sound video and game controllers, right-click ati hdmi audio and select “disable.”

    YES YES YES! I’m soooo happy! Idling at around 0 on all 4 cores. =)

    29 January 2009 at 08:50

  • SaltH20Fish says:

    I purchased the Gateway 6800fx with the i7 920 Processor and ATI HD4850. It comes with Vista 64 and I experienced this same issue. After all the the disabling of the enhancements the problem still exists. To totally resolve this issue, you will also need to disable the ATI HDMI Audio from your device manager (under Sound, video and game controls section).

    Side note: If you are experiencing the mouse flicker bug when hovering the mouse in explorer this will resolve it too. Other posts will recommend to disable shell hardware detection, however, you dont have to if you just disable the ATI HDMI Audio.

    8 February 2009 at 02:30

  • Mike says:

    Just to let you know that this solution is still being used. Thank you so much. Fixes slow start and stuttering near end of tracks. Brilliant.

    21 February 2009 at 13:17

  • babak ghandriz says:

    thank yoooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu dear

    26 February 2009 at 03:43

  • Bas says:

    As mentioned before. Disabling Ati hdmi audio in device manager solved the problem for me.
    Asus p5b-e
    Ati R4850

    Also the annoying cursor in explorer is gone!
    Tnx to Hans en Free888!

    3 March 2009 at 13:51

  • FatMike says:

    Thanks – Just made a customer of mine very happy ^_^

    5 March 2009 at 06:59

  • Tina says:

    Thanks,
    It really solved my problem.

    10 March 2009 at 07:02

  • gregg says:

    quote from Mark L. Ferguson at
    http://www.technologyquestions.com/technology/windows-vista/239704-dcomlaunch-svchost-plug-play-hi-cpu-usage.html

    This problem only occurs with audio drivers which do indeed have an
    ‘enhancements’ feature. Not all systems show this in Control Panel, Sounds,
    Speaker properties, Enhancements tab. An improved driver would eliminate the
    delay.

    [WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.

    10 March 2009 at 16:39

  • Dennis says:

    Uhh, how I had hoped the initial suggestion and all the comments had helped me when I saw them. Unfortunately none of them did, but they let me to a solution which I have to mention here.
    I connected My Sony Ericsson C902 to my new HP Laptop via bluetooth, and eventhough a couple of drivers were not installed correctly, it looked to be working acceptable. Apparantly this caused the problem. As I in my desperation started to uninstall programs, when I got to the PCSuite that holds the drivers of the phone and uninstalled that, the CPU peaks went away, and so did my frustration. So my idea is that if you have units in your device manager that has not been installed correctly, this could cause the problem. Maybe this could help others.
    Thanks for the ideas on this page.

    24 March 2009 at 12:53

  • John says:

    Your fix didn’t fix my similar problem. But it is a HUGE fly in the soup. At least as big as a rat or a small cat.

    My i7-920 system which has 8, yes count them, 8 cpu threads, has shown at much as 10 to 20 percent usage due to this DCOM monster.

    12 April 2009 at 21:00

  • Babu says:

    Hans

    Gr8

    keep it up

    26 April 2009 at 22:33

  • Sprinx says:

    Simply great advice. My CPU was going to 100% at the end of each song, about 10 seconds before it ended and went to the next song. This solved that problem on my Dell Precision 380 with onboard sound.

    18 May 2009 at 18:15

  • Lex says:

    Hm, I’m pretty sure this is the solution I’m looking for although when I tick disable it doesn’t allow me to click on apply, and does not seem to work by just clicking ‘OK’. So when I restart my computer and check to see if it’s on disable, it’s back on enable. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

    3 June 2009 at 09:17

  • David Henry James says:

    The enhancements tap missing? Try this:

    Open up Windows Media Payer
    Go to Tools then Options
    Then go to the privacy tab
    under Enhanced playback and device experience:uncheck Download usage rights automatically when i play or sync a file.

    click Apply then ok.
    that should fix it

    (Actually, I unchecked most of the other boxes too!)

    •
    •
    Posts: 1
    Reputation: matthew16654 is an unknown quantity at this point
    Solved Threads: 0
    matthew16654 matthew16654 is offline Offline
    Newbie Poster
    Re: Windows Media Player 11 in Vista.
    #17
    Dec 21st, 2008

    http://www.daniweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84812&page=2&highlight=windows+media+11+player+delay

    11 June 2009 at 06:28

  • Tommi says:

    Thank you very much! I’ve been trying to resolve this problem for about 2 days now and I stumbled across this. Magnificent. Been trying to figure out what the f#ck the problem was with Process explorer screwing around with .dll files and scanning the computer for virues. And this was the solution? As they say, the solution to the hardest problem often seems to be the easiest one ^^. Thanks a lot again!

    16 August 2009 at 14:06

  • Doug says:

    Great discussion! Led me to find the fix for my 20% CPU use problem. I too, had traced the problem to the dcom server process/plug and play, but was stuck there. I found this string of messages and tried the easy fixes suggested. No luckl. But after reading, I was encouraged to start removing drivers one by one. One of my more recent installations was for my Garmin PGS watch. It connects to the computer via a wireless USB interface. BINGO!! I removed that software, and the CPU usage is down to 0%.

    Thanks everyone for the great insights.

    28 August 2009 at 15:32

  • richard clarke says:

    Just one question. Does this affect the usability of plug and play devices?

    29 August 2009 at 10:16

  • ATechGuy says:

    Privacy tab is the key for those who don’t have the enhancements option. Brilliant observation. Thanks!

    16 September 2009 at 15:07

  • Nicolas says:

    Hey there,
    Where do u untick Disable all enhancements?
    Cheers
    Nicolas

    27 September 2009 at 16:22

  • Starsky says:

    I have the same problem with ” svchost.exe -DcomLaunch” but in Device Manager > Sound, video and game controllers >I’ve one Realtek High Definioton…
    I don’t have ATI HDMI audio what must I disabled…

    23 October 2009 at 21:35

  • Justin says:

    Thanks for this. I was searching for asolution for this problem for some time.
    To find Disable all enhancements
    From control panel select – Sound
    in the playback tab
    click speakers and then properties
    select enhancement tab & there untick Disable all enhancements

    26 October 2009 at 13:22

  • anon says:

    awesome man! solved the great puzzle!

    25 November 2009 at 09:26

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