Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• More on UrgeMS.exe

  UrgeMS.exe seems to be causing issues for a lot of people. I mentioned previously that you can disable the process via security policy, and someone pointed out a registry setting to disable it a little cleaner. I was hoping they'd fix this in the future, but it looks like all they did was make it worse. A recent update made this process a bit, shall we say, heartier. In previous versions, UrgeMS.exe was launched only when Windows Media Player started up; now it seems to launch the process repeatedly while using URGE. Worse yet, the registry fix mentioned no longer works - whatever launches this process explicitly resets the Enabled registry key to true. A user on the CNET forums posted another workaround : replacing the UrgeMS.exe process with an "empty" executable. So while Windows Media Player will still repeatedly launch this process, at least now it won't thrash your disk and use a significant amount of CPU. I've attached the empty executable I'm using - it's simply a new console application... Posted Jul 01 2007, 05:28 PM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Music, Misbehaving Software, Microsoft, Audio

• Disabling UrgeMS.exe

  I noticed my machine running slower lately, and UrgeMS.exe (URGE Media Scanner) was thrashing the disk and running up to 50% CPU. Obviously, this is part of MTV's URGE music store, the default store for Windows Media Player 11. It appears that the process is related to the "Auto-Mix" feature, which I don't use enough to justify the serious performance impact. I have a fairly large music collection, but it doesn't seem to ever let up. One forum post suggests disabling this via Local Security Policy. Great idea! My system definitely runs better now. Hopefully this is something they address in the future... Update As John mentioned in the comments, you can also prevent this from running by setting "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MTV Networks\Urge\Scanner\Enabled" to 0. If you don't want to mess around with the registry, simply download the attached registry key and double-click on it. Update #2 This fix no longer works. You can replace the UrgeMS.exe with an "empty" executable though. Posted Feb 05 2007, 07:46 PM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Music, Vista, Microsoft, Audio

• dopisp adds iPod support in WMP 11

  Like most people, I would prefer to use a single media player to manage my library. I like Windows Media Player 11 more than iTunes 7 , and this is especially true since I've subscribed to the Urge subscription service . (I really wish Apple would provide a subscription-based service for the iPod). The problem, of course, is that Windows Media Player still doesn't support the iPod - something I complained about in 2004 with WMP10 . As it turns out, someone finally wrote a plug-in to support the iPod in WMP ( via LifeHacker ). I downloaded the trial last night and will give it more time, but so far it seems to work very well. Assuming I can figure out a good way to handle podcasts, it is well worth the $15. Posted Dec 28 2006, 11:33 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Gadgets, Music, Microsoft, Apple, Audio