Zune Software v.4 is Killing my Processor!

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@`~%~ I'm your Foxxy Mama ~%~`@

Yeah. I running the Zune software on a tx1000 HP laptop. It hogs up quite a bit of my processor cycles. Found this video of a guy who installed this software on a Core i7 machine..... lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1D8oIC2gfg

Guess we need to upgrade.

i'm having similar issues. i have an AMD x3 920 proc (AMD 4890) running win7 RC and zune causes 70-90% cpu spikes in all three cores. neither going into mini mode, moving to a more static display (like the settings tab within the program), nor completely minimizing the window causes CPU usage to drop. the only thing i found to help was reducing the quality of the display graphics from premium to advanced. this cause CPU usage to drop to 5-15% on all three cores (still ridiculous considering when the player is minimized all it should be doing is playing back an mp3 file).

even though both premium and advanced display options claim to use hardware acceleration, it would appear that at least premium and maybe both options are not using the videocard to render the display effects. these are serious issues as it makes using the program with the premium display option enabled an unrealistic option, even if the window were to remain in a minimized or mini state.... i'm currently previewing the zune pass service, but i'm unlikely to pay for it after my free trial expires with these software issues since it would require the use of a program that taxes nearly all of my CPU resources for the simple task of playing back muic... disappointing to say the least

update: last night, after a couple of hours of continuous playback with the graphics level set to advanced, i noticed the use of the CPU had dropped to about 3-10%. i then turned the graphics back up to premium and noticed that cpu cores now rarely exceeded 20% usage and more commonly occupied the 5-15% range, a huge improvement. i'd done nothing though during this time and after another 18 hours or so of using the zune software, cpu usage has remained somewhat low and consistent. the problem then would appear to have been some background process that the zune software was doing during those first few hours of use after installation. hard to say what it could have been exactly: i had no device plugged it so it couldn't have been syncing, and i had only a couple of smart DJ lists, both of which are set to not auto-update. i wish microsoft and the developers would be more upfront about what the software is doing.

btw: this is not the first time the zune software performs unwanted or unexplained actions. though it appears to be fixed now, with all previous iterations of the software, zune would constantly write id3v1 tags to all of my files and write in "album artist" info to my id3v2 tags as well despite the very clear setting to "not fill in missing data." annoyingly, zune still uses the album artist field instead of the much more obviously simple artist field to sort by, but it's a step in the right direction

 calcio109 wrote:

i'm having similar issues. i have an AMD x3 920 proc (AMD 4890) running win7 RC and zune causes 70-90% cpu spikes in all three cores. neither going into mini mode, moving to a more static display (like the settings tab within the program), nor completely minimizing the window causes CPU usage to drop. the only thing i found to help was reducing the quality of the display graphics from premium to advanced. this cause CPU usage to drop to 5-15% on all three cores (still ridiculous considering when the player is minimized all it should be doing is playing back an mp3 file).

even though both premium and advanced display options claim to use hardware acceleration, it would appear that at least premium and maybe both options are not using the videocard to render the display effects. these are serious issues as it makes using the program with the premium display option enabled an unrealistic option, even if the window were to remain in a minimized or mini state.... i'm currently previewing the zune pass service, but i'm unlikely to pay for it after my free trial expires with these software issues since it would require the use of a program that taxes nearly all of my CPU resources for the simple task of playing back muic... disappointing to say the least

I think is time to start looking for some patterns because it is obviously happening to some (me including) and not to others.  Removing all playlists worked for me, but at times I noticed that my CPU will sky-rocket to 100% and stay there for a about a minute, then drop down to normal state. 

Here is what I noticed right now. 
- Left my Zune Desktop software running overnight,
- in the morning, the CPU was at a very comfortable level of about 2-3%
- as soon as I started listening to some songs it jumped to about 20 to 30%
- after listening to some songs for a while and CPU at about 20-30%, I added 37 new songs to my collection.  The CPU then sky-rocket to 100% and stayed there for a few minutes.

My guess after that scenerio is that the Zune software has to run some kind of analysis on each new song in order for the Smart DJ feature to work.  This guess is backed up  by the fact that when I first installed the 4.0 software, my CPU stayed at 100% for hours - I guess analyzing 17k songs takes a few hours.  Not sure if the CPU spike is caused by the 37 new songs added or me simply playing the tracks.  Can anybody reproduce a scenario such as this? 

so about an hour ago, the zune software on my PC started spiking all cores on my CPU again (i hadn't noticed any such behavior in about a month). i haven't added any new playlists or music to my collection in about a week. currently, the software is still taxing the CPU, regardless of whether i have it fullscreen/minimized/playing music/or paused. i can only imagine at this point that it'll stop eventually, like it did before, and like it does for everyone, but we still have no idea what the software is doing behind the scenes and why it requires so much CPU power.

MS/zune team - we'd like an answer

 cesarsandoval wrote:

"I think is time to start looking for some patterns because it is obviously happening to some (me including) and not to others.

Here is what I noticed right now. 
- Left my Zune Desktop software running overnight,
- in the morning, the CPU was at a very comfortable level of about 2-3%
- as soon as I started listening to some songs it jumped to about 20 to 30%
- after listening to some songs for a while and CPU at about 20-30%, I added 37 new songs to my collection.  The CPU then sky-rocket to 100% and stayed there for a few minutes.

...

My guess is backed up  by the fact that when I first installed the 4.0 software, my CPU stayed at 100% for hours - I guess analyzing 17k songs takes a few hours.  Not sure if the CPU spike is caused by the 37 new songs added or me simply playing the tracks.  Can anybody reproduce a scenario such as this?

...

My guess after that scenerio is that the Zune software has to run some kind of analysis on each new song in order for the Smart DJ feature to work."

Your guess is correct! I've reproduced your scenario on a variety of desktops, laptops, and netbooks. However, that isn't the only problem. I've been analysing this forum and I've tested Zune 4 on lots of different hardware configurations. Here's the "pattern" I'm seeing:

Microsoft seems to have dropped support for hardware older than about five years. Most people on this forum who are having significant issues have older hardware. And I haven't read about, seen or tested a Pentium III computer yet that could run Zune software 4, let alone analyze a library for Smart DJ (I tried it on my 2000/XP beige box) The worst hardware so far seems to be anything close to or less than 800 MHz CPU and 512 MB RAM.

To all you people complaining that Zune 4 is "buggy" because "Version 3 worked just fine", you may need to buy a new computer. Microsoft can only support old hardware for so long.

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User devices:
 Zune HD 32GB

just to clarify, i don't use the smart DJ feature and as such, i uncheck the option to have zune fill in missing metadata to my collection. i'm running a new computer i put together 3 months ago. that's an AMD x3 chip, an AMD 4890, and 4 gigs of ram. as i explained before, the second time i saw zune become CPU hungry was more than a week after i had even added any new music to my collection, so my symptoms have yet to be fully explained by anyone's theories...

 MusicGamesPCs wrote:

To all you people complaining that Zune 4 is "buggy" because "Version 3 worked just fine", you may need to buy a new computer. Microsoft can only support old hardware for so long.

 

they sold these devices on the premise it will work over certain hardware configs if you honestly think we should shell out $$ every 2 yrs because ms decides not to inform anyone an update may not be for them, then start buying us hardware.

 

honestly, buying a new pc every 2 yrs!  you're insane!  and to what is this not buggy software for those of us with streamlined quad core 3.0 with 8+GB or ram and windows 7 and still have 4 buried cores!  this software uses more resources than 2hd recording software programs + video conversion softare + media player with viz.  spending more $$ isn't the issue for anyone meeting the min requirements!

I too have been having problems since 4.0 came out:

1) One of my dual PIII processors is always pegged at 100% whenever Zune is running. Taks Manager shows no I/O rates when Zune isn't busy, so it's very unlikely to me  it's (still) trying to perform library conversions (<1300 songs, most are WMA lossless).
2) I cannot sign in to the marketplace. No errors, sign-on just hangs there. It does report incorrect passwords (go figure...).
3) Zune won't close normally. I have to perform and "End Process"  via Task Manager after every use.

Remarkably, I can still access and use most functionality, for example my regular podcast updates still function OK.

And, yes, I have:

* Installed the full 4.0 package after cleaning up prior Zune installs (twice) and after ensuring I was 100% on Windows Update (XP SP3)
* Re-installed the .NET framework (took 3+ hours)
* Upgraded both my Zune 30GBs to 3.2 (no effect)
* Reset my media collection using the tool (no effect)
* Checked all my language and location settings to ensure they point to the good 'ol USA.

At this point I am extremely remorseful that I pushed the "Check for Upgrades" button that one time. I had zero problems with 3.x on the same desktop hardware and software.

I just can't rationalize the "you need to upgrade your computer" arguments. If I hadn't changed to Zune 4.0, I wouldn't have to even consider upgrading and at very least the Zune team could warn us that changes may not be compatible. *All* my other XP applications are still working just fine, thank you very much. While I don't expect the Zune team to perform extensive regression testing, I do expect upgrades to function on reasonable older platforms, or at the very least that they allow us users to back-out the Zune software to a version that did work OK (standard software "stuff"). Where did the full 3.1 download go and why did it go away so quickly???

Bottom line: I'm very disappointed in 4.0!!!

I also have an iPod touch but generally like my Zunes better, when the Zune software is working that is... So, it's over to the iPod for now and I sincerely hope I don't end up with two Zune 30 bricks! Maybe, just maybe, 4.1 will return me to Zune... No ZuneHD on the horizon for me.

I had the same problems as you guys. I have an older Dell laptop with XP. Zune 3.0 was really slow to use. Tonight I upgraded to 4.0 and it was like molasses. I would not recognize the device to begin with. I rebooted the computer and finally got it to work. The software was still superslow and I could not browse the marketplace.

However, I tried this solution from another thread about Vista 64 being slow and it actually worked. Zune 4.0 now runs lightning fast. It is truly amazing. I don't use IE much and I am not sure what changing a setting in it has to do with Zune but it fixed the problem.

So instead of pulling out your hair you can always try this... who knows, it might help.

IE -> Tools -> Connections -> LAN settings and clear the box "Automatically Detect Settings".

I have more than enough processor power and ram to run this, an HP DV4 Notebook with a 2Ghz Core2Duo and 8GB of DDR2 Ram.  There are times that the Zune 4.0 software will rev my CPU usage to 100% for no apparent reason. I do not use Smart DJ.  Even when I have turned the graphics down to basic it will do this!! I have also turned off the LAN settings to automatically detect settings.  Any hints/clues as to what the hell is going on with this? Does Microsoft plan on a fix of some type to remedy the obvious large number of users that encounter this issue? This has occurred on my notebook running Windows 7 64bit and a workstation running XP Pro.  Thanks hope someone solves this.