Windows Media Player Problems

Lately when I play music in my Windows Media Player version 9, my tracks have been skipping. It always begins to happen at either the end of the first song or throughout the second song. The player then plays a few normal songs, then skips once again for a few more songs. These skips aren't just like a CD skipping - it plays 1 second of song, waits a few seconds, then plays another blip of sound. When the music skips, I can hear my hard drive or whatever is inside the laptop make a noise.. and it only happens when the music is silent. It just irks me quite a lot because I used to be able to play music on this computer but for the past month or so it's incredibly ridiculous trying to bother with a player that won't even work. I know this question sounds rather confusing but if someone can be of some help that would be amazing! I'm not sure if it is a problem with the player or my computer. If more specifics about the problem or my computer are needed, let me know and I will definitely tell you more. Thank you!

Hi, Sorry to hear of the problem with your Media Player. The skipping that you experience sometimes indicates that your computer is "doing something else" as well as playing music and there are not enough resourses to go round. Check to see if this is so as a first step, (Task Manager accessed by pressing Alt+Ctrl and Del simultaneously and clicking on the Application tab) will show you all running applications and if you click or double click on the column header for CPU this will show the applications in order of CPU resourse utilisation. Any applications that you are unsure about, can be researched by entering the name into your favourite search engine. You can also check on the "Processes" using the same technique (just click the Processes Tab) However a word of warning…Please do not end any Process using Task Manager as this could damage your machine. Windows Media Player is now up to Version 11 so you could try an upgrade (free) to see if this helps. Regards paws

Thanks for your help! I will try the newest version (11) to see if that does anything. But there does seem to be a lot of processes and things running in the background of my computer. I'll check out that route too. The reason I would really like to keep Windows Media is because my laptop had those special buttons on the side so I can skip tracks and pause them without messing with the computer screen.. I don't know if these are reprogramable to another type of player, but if you by chance know, please tell me how.