is it that windows media player itself consumes more memory or any other processes running in background. check the processes tab in task manager. and close unwanted processes.
if its purely windows media player that consumes the CPU then try,
Right clicking the display screen and turn-off the visualizations and see if that helps.
also,
1)try "downgrading" to previous versions of WMP and see if the problem still occurs?
2)run a full virus-scan
3)Try disabling folder monitoring within WMP, which might end up using a lot of resources.
check out this, *www.google.com/search?hl=en&client...w63&q=cpu+usage+++media+player+11&btnG=Search