Does a home network really use that many resources?

[kaiweiler]

I am unsure if this is a hardware problem or software problem since I am not that familiar with networking, so this may get moved as we progress with some troubleshooting.

"wmpnetwk.exe" is often using upwards of 2.5gb of memory, and 30-40% of my CPU, and really bogging everything down. My hardware is to be considered up to par, how intrusive should a home network be?
I have a home network set up with two PC's both running Windows 7, 1TB MyBookWorld (connected externally directly to LAN), and an XBOX 360.
My PC is: Q6600 quad core, 3gb of DDR2, 750gb sata2
Roomate PC is: i7 920 quad core, 6gb DDR3, 1tb sata2
XBOX has a 20gb HD and connects to my PC through Media Center, which is then displayed by my projector (irrelevant).
MyBookWorld 1tb is external and plugged directly into the router. Both PC's use it for media storage and MediaCenter (XBOX) gets media from it.

Is my network set up improperly or is it normal to have a computer of these specs totally bogged down by wmpnetwk.exe with no other major programs running?

[dadelor]

It happens, its not your setup. your problem could be in a .avi youre sharing or it could be the amount of data youre sharing. the easiest way to solve this problem is to use http://tversity (http://tversity.com/) its a great program doesnt use that much resources and in my experience it streams faster than wmp11 and youre still able to stream to your 360 just like with wmp sharing plus you can stream remotely from any web browser. if you decide to use it just to let you know so that you can avoid a headache you must disable "windows media network sharing" and "SSD Discovery" services or else it wont work since youre using vista. hope this helps.

[lightshow]

This is happening because of a bad .avi file.

Windows Media Player is trying to read some metadata on the file which has been corrupted (which will happen if you have a bazallion movies from torrents and just dump them all (extract) to your harddrive)

Others said they deleted the problematic .avi file and once that happend, the service quit eating up abnormal amounts of system resources.

[kaiweiler]

Hmm alright thanks.
What is the best way to seek out a corrupt file?

EDIT: I am on Windows 7 btw

[dadelor]

If you have alot of files you can use DivxRepair and you can add all your video files to be checked and it will repair the video if corrupt.
http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/DivXRepair-Download-14597.html
and like i mentioned before Tversity is a very good alternative.