Zune Performance Hog

I have seen many people across many different sites complaining about the performance hit that the Zune player takes up.

It takes up about 80MB of RAM, which is fine.

My problem is that the CPU usage spikes a lot. So much so that the fan on my laptop kicks into high whenever I play music. If it's paused/stopped, I don't have an issue.

I love the player, the way that you can so easily add album info/art is great.. But I'm not sure it's worth feeling like I'm sitting next to an airplane.

So far I haven't seen a concrete response other than "Yea, that's Micro$oft", or, "Re-install it, that fixes everything". By the third revision you'd think they would have this hammered out..

lol what laptop do you use?

My old desktop ( AMD Athlon 64 bit, single core) has no trouble running the Zune software when it comes to processor performance (512 MB RAM makes it laggy though)

Can you lower the display settings on the Zune software?  Or is it already at basic

I also suggest buying a laptop cooler, if your processor heats up that fast

i can only tell you good luck and join the crowd already in line complaining about this.  i think you're only real chance is to find out at what usage % that your laptop kicks off at and avoid it (and buy the laptop cooler and/or more ram).

one easy way to do that is to kill your start up group and non ms services...then find any ms services that you don't need and disable them.  i'm sure you'll find a few on your start up and your services you can't live without, turn them back on one at a time until you find something you can live with.  those tips and a clean pc are all i've found in assistance in this area....reducing the software to basic and your vid card rez/settings could also have an effect.

I'm having the same problem. I dl Zune software to see how it works and all because I am thinking of getting the Zune HD. But when i start the software it works ok for a few minutes and then it shuts my whole computer down. I have gone into task manager and checked the usage. It doesn't seem to be too far out of line as to what my itunes is using. But after just a minute or so it shuts everything down. Computer turns off.
If the software does this I may just have to stick with my first thought and get a new iTouch. At least iTunes doesn't shut me down.
I really like the Zune HD though... this is going to be tough...

see if this problem persists after the Zune 4.0 update, the update may fix that issue.

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Zune 120

 livelyppop wrote:

At least iTunes doesn't shut me down.

After 2 years of Zune software, I've never had it 'shut me down'.  If your computer is actually shutting down, you likely have bigger problems with your operating system and PC that somehow the Zune software exposes.  Are your video card drivers completely up to date?  I guess, sure, wait until 4.0... then you can worry about it if it still happens.

When is Zune 4.0, and is it something being recoded from the ground up?  I decided to try out the Zune software today and it literally spikes one of my cores to 100% usage the entire time.  This is totally unacceptable for a program that simply manages your media library and plays it back for you.  All it was doing was downloading a podcast while playing an MP3, there was no video conversion happening or anything of the likes.

Now before you say go get a real computer and/or video card I'm running an e5200 @ 3.2ghz and an GTX 260 so it's definitely more than enough for simply playing back some mp3s, and as much as I'm not an Apple fan, and I just reinstalled iTunes after trying Zune to see the difference, it barely even registers using CPU time.

The reason I was trying out Zune was because I was interested in getting a Zune to replace my iPod, and was looking for something to manage podcasts for me since WMP 12 does not do this (god knows why on that).

I really do like the Zune look and feel, and if they fix the insane CPU issues in 4.0 I'll gladly switch back to it again to try it out and think of replacing my iPod with a Zune, but until then it's a deal breaker for me.

I really don't see any spiking, markrvc, on any of my systems while playing.  Do note if you are "new" to the software, it'll spend a long time analyzing/fingerprinting your content to match it against the Marketplace so the social/statistic functions work correctly.  It could take hours for a large library.  (My recommendation is to just leave the Zune software idle while you are out and let it finish.)

But, heck, it could be something else for you.  Check out 4.0 in 2 days.

I'll try 4.0 when it comes out and give it a week.  Maybe it was doing the analyzing and that's why it was spiking at 100 constantly on that one core, I don't know.  My library is not overly large, about 15,000 songs, but it could be considered large for the zune software?

Like I said, I really did like the interface and that, and as long as the CPU usage isn't too nuts I'd adopt it full time and consider picking up a Zune to replace my ipod.

if your pc is shutting down at random, i'd look into overheating and temp sensor settings to start.....zune software has never done anything like this to me; and it seems to like acting up here.

 markrvc wrote:

I'll try 4.0 when it comes out and give it a week.  Maybe it was doing the analyzing and that's why it was spiking at 100 constantly on that one core, I don't know.  My library is not overly large, about 15,000 songs, but it could be considered large for the zune software?

Like I said, I really did like the interface and that, and as long as the CPU usage isn't too nuts I'd adopt it full time and consider picking up a Zune to replace my ipod.

15K songs is big enough, if it's having trouble linking your songs to the marketplace.  It could also be searching for album art and missing tags, if you have this setting enabled (and have tag issues.)  Check your 'recent plays' on your zune card.  If songs are listed in grey, they aren't linked.  A few is normal but many is an indication that you have a linking issue.

Zune 4.0 gives me a 99k memory usage and 2-4-7 CPU usage playing back a song...seems okay. I remember when I switched from Foobar the RAM usage was kind of "wow", then I figured I have 4GB and don't really care. It does a ton of stuff so it makes sense.