# WMP, iTunes, Winamp, freezes.



## paran0id42 (May 23, 2010)

Helloooo FAF;  Ive gotten good advice here from the past so I once again need the tech minds that I do not have!

My OS is Windows 7, I got a whole new PC in november.

Heres the situation.  About 4 days ago out of the blue, my media players were not openning.  I tried to open up my itunes but the itunes window never loaded on my desktop or desktop bar.  My processes list showed it was running though.  Eventually, (about 10 minutes later) it will pop up, but remain frozen.  It eventually unfreezes, but after this;  I try to sync my ipod with itunes to upload some music but it doesn't sync, it just stays stuck on Sync in progress.  My computer was very quick to respond before all of this happened.  The only thing I did that day and noticed when this happened was update my Java.  Windows kept pestering me about it at the corner and I just got it out of the way.

My windows media player will open the window right away, but remain Unresponsive for 5-10 minutes.
Photoshop CS2 occassionally does it too but not as much as the media players.
I tried a system restore as well, it did not work.  I reinstalled itunes to its current date, that did not work either.  
I installed Winamp, and tested to see if it would freeze here too.  It did.
I believe there isn't something wrong with the problems but somewhere in my PC.   A friend of mine mentioned something faulty with my memory, a memory leak?

What do you guys think, your help is always appreciated


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## Grimfang (May 23, 2010)

This may not apply to your situation since it seems like the slowness appeared rather abruptly, but when's the last time you did a system defrag? That's one of the first things I'll usually try, besides virus/malware scans. Beyond the typical things to check, I'm not exactly sure what could cause that.

Also, it'll probably save some time to share some info about your computer and OS now, for anyone who may be more well inclined with comps.


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## Runefox (May 23, 2010)

A defrag and malware scans might be a good place to start (malware could certainly cause this), and for anti-malware, there isn't anything better than Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, but I'd look at a few other things, too.

Firstly, what anti-virus are you running, if any? Is it up to date?

Second, have you tried uninstalling/reinstalling Java?

Third, when these programs freeze up like that, are they using a high amount of CPU in Task Manager?

Fourth, since this seems to be mostly pertaining to music programs, is your music stored on the same hard drive as Windows, or is it on an external/secondary hard drive? It's quite possible if it is on a secondary drive, that it's reaching the end of its life.

Lastly, seeing as the computer's not even a year old, it's not likely, but possible that something's happened to the hard drive or memory. A bad/dying hard drive (defective by this stage) can certainly cause a long pause for applications to launch, and it's probably a good idea to rule it out while your computer's (presumably) still under warranty. The good thing about diagnosing this is that Windows will typically log issues it encounters with the hard drive as Disk errors/warnings in the Event Viewer (and even if it isn't a disk error, any other errors/warnings occurring around that point in time could also point to a possible cause):

Next time you notice the freezing, hold the Windows key and press R. In the box that comes up, type *eventvwr.msc* and hit Enter/OK. In the new window that comes up, go into Windows Logs, and then look under both the Application log and the System log and look for the date/time that it occurs.


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## paran0id42 (May 23, 2010)

Runefox said:


> A defrag and malware scans might be a good place to start (malware could certainly cause this), and for anti-malware, there isn't anything better than Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, but I'd look at a few other things, too.
> 
> Firstly, what anti-virus are you running, if any? Is it up to date?
> 
> ...



I just remembered I had my old hard drive hooked up to my new computer as a secondary drive since I needed files off it.  I took out my old one (and I mean old ) and booted up.  Everything opens just fine now.
When I got my PC, I reinstalled all these programs so I dont think they were all being run on my old hard drive..  but now that the old hard drive is out everything is openning up like it should have.

I'll answer the other questions though;
1.  All I use is AVG Antivirus unfortunately (Free one)
2.  I thought about it, someone told me that shouldn't have been the problem.   The system restore date was set to before I updated java so I jumped to that point but things were the same.
3.  Task manager was showing they were running at like 60,000K.  Isnt that normal for a media player?

I will proceed to use malwarebytes on my computer just to be safe, as well as a defrag.  But right now my things are running fine now that I took that old HD out.


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## Runefox (May 23, 2010)

Ahh, well, if your music was on that drive, that'd explain it quite readily. If not, then it's likely that the drive was causing the controller some grief while it was in there and gumming things up nicely. At any rate, glad to hear that sorted it for you.

And yeah, number two shouldn't have done anything, but you never know. And as for number three, yeah, 60MB is in around what you'd expect. I was going to say "for iTunes and WMP", but it seems my Winamp, decked out with input plugins, is pulling 90MB.  Who knew? I always thought it weighed between 20-40MB, but it's not like I don't have the RAM to spare.

As for defragging, you should check out Auslogics' Disk Defrag or Defraggler - Both should give you a bit better results versus the built-in defragger (which used to be awesome in 2k/XP, but somehow got neutered along the way). Also, before you defrag, run CCleaner to remove temporary files and so on so that you'll get cleaner results (and free up unnecessary hard disk usage to boot).


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