I found out mediaplayer was insanely demanding so i am looking at download.com but they only talk about the features not the resource requirements, All I want is the vid quality to be good the ability to play many different video formats (.avi and .mov would be wounderful ive yet to find a good one that did that.) i use windows vista home premium 32 - bit.

I use VLC for many movie files in Vista. I use WMP almost exclusively for music and rarely for video playback, unless I absolutely have to.

Another thing you can do is turn off Windows Indexing and use
locate32.exe free search program
instead of Windows Search. Unfortunately lots of stuff in Vista makes
the HD run on whether the owner of the PC really has a use for all those
processes/services/scheduled tasks or not. I'm hoping they come out with
something in Control Panel like Settings Groupings that would turn on or
off groups of settings you need or don't need to use or not use some
features.

Otherwise the system just hogs the HD too much. For instance if you
use only 3rd party media players, don't use Windows Search, and
do not have a laptop to sync files with, push a couple of buttons in
Control Panel and all related unneeded tasks would be disabled. If
you ever wanted to use some of that stuff, toggle them back on etc..
As it is now you have to google web sites that explain each service,
scheduled task etc. and what is likely to happen good or bad if you
turn that task off. Puts way too much stress on the casual user.

Once the indexing is complete, the amount of activity on the hard disk should drop. However, loading large media files will also access the disk as well, so will internet security programs in the background. A great deal of software runs in the background, expect the hard disk to be used extensively. I have folding@home running all the time and it too accesses the disk. If you don't use Windows search, you can turn off indexing, but you may lose some features in Vista.

If that's all it was it wouldn't be so bad. In my quest to quiet my HD I also found some disquieting hidden scheduled tasks that run gathering data in the background, even if the feature that uses the data has been disabled. Customer Experience Improvement Program for one. You opt out of it in Control Panel but the hidden tasks still run using up your resources. Plus if you have a Media Center type PC yet another inventory of media files runs in the background even though you may never tune in a TV station with the machine. Looks like everything was left in an enabled state because testing it any other way would miss the release deadline.

For a consumer who doesn't happen to be a computer professional tuning the system without breaking it is just about impossible. That's why I say they need to incorporate some type of system usage profile tuning settings in Control Panel that the average person can use without hosing the system.

I have a media center on my Vista PC. Modern hard drives are designed for a high amount of read/write operations, this sort of activity is not unusual in operating systems. Generally, the amount of data accessed on the hard disk in the background is small. Right now, most of the things in my resource monitor indicate that Folding@Home is using the disk extensively, along with a video running in the background, my real-time antivirus scanner, and Firefox. Nothing on the list is searching for media, and indexing is only working when I access or change a file. Paging will also use access the disk regularly.