At times, you guys may find that your WMI Provider Host process is actually consistently utilizing a significant chunk of the CPU on your Windows 10/8/7 computer. There have been reports that most of the time the process ends up using up to 50% of the CPU power. Especially when media applications are in use as well. In this post, we will see how can you troubleshoot WMI Provider Host High CPU Usage issue. But before we talk about ways to troubleshoot, let us take an instant look at what WMI Provider Host is. We are going to talk about What is wmiprvse.exe and Why it takes High CPU Usage. Let’s begin!
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What Is WMI Provider Host (wmiprvse.exe)?
“WMI” actually stands for “Windows Management Instrumentation”. This is a Windows feature that gives a standardized way for software and administrative scripts. In order to request information about the state of your Windows operating system and data on it. “WMI Providers” gives this information, when requested. Such as, software or commands can find information about the state of BitLocker drive encryption. See entries from the event log, or request data from installed applications that include a WMI provider as well. Microsoft has a list of included WMI providers on its website actually.
This is a specifically useful feature for enterprises that centrally manage PCs. Especially as information can be requested through scripts and shown in a standard way in administrative consoles. But, even on a home PC, some software that you have installed may request information about the system via the WMI interface.
You can also use WMI yourself to find a number of useful pieces of information that are not normally exposed in the Windows interface on your own PC. Such as, we’ve covered the WMI Command line tool (WMIC) to get your PC’s serial number, find your motherboard’s model number, or also just to view the SMART health status of a hard drive.
Is WmiPrvSE.exe a virus or not?
The legit WmiPrvSE.exe or the Windows Management Instrumentation Provider Service process is basically located in the Windows/System32 folder. However, malware can disguise themselves using this name and place themselves in any of the folders. So Thus, to isolate this possibility, you need to check the Properties of the file and scan it with your antivirus.
Why Is It Using Much CPU?
WMI Provider Host should not normally use much CPU, because it shouldn’t normally do anything. It may occasionally use some CPU when another piece of software or script on your PC asks for information through WMI. and that is a normal thing. High CPU usage is likely just a sign that another application is requesting data through WMI.
But, prolonged high CPU usage is a sign that something is wrong. WMI Provider Host shouldn’t be using lots of CPU resources all the time actually.
If you restart the Windows Management Instrumentation service then it may help if it’s stuck in a bad state. You could also just restart your computer, however, there’s a way to restart the service without restarting your computer. In order to do this, then open your Start menu, type “Services.msc”, and tap Enter to open the Services tool. Find the “Windows Management Instrumentation service” in the list, right-click it, and then choose “Restart”.
If you see consistently high CPU usage, it’s likely that another process on your system is behaving badly. If a process is constantly requesting for a large amount of information from WMI providers. Then this will cause the WMI Provider Host process to use a lot of CPU. That other process is the problem.
Further | wmiprvse.exe
In order to identify which specific process is basically causing problems with WMI, use the Event Viewer. On Windows 10 or 8, you can right-click the Start button and then select “Event Viewer” to open it. On Windows 7, open the Start menu, type “eventvwr.msc”, and tap Enter to open it.
In the left pane of the Event Viewer window, navigate to Applications and then Service Logs\Microsoft\Windows\WMI-Activity\Operational.
Scroll through the list and then search for recent “Error” events. Tap each event and look for the number to the right of “ClientProcessId” in the bottom pane. This tells you the ID number of the process that actually caused the WMI error.
There’s a good chance you’ll see many errors here. The errors may be caused by the same process ID number, or you may see multiple different process IDs that are causing errors. Tap each error and see what the ClientProcessId is to find out.
You can also pin down a process that may be causing problems. First, open a Task Manager window through tapping Ctrl+Shift+Escape or through right-clicking the taskbar and selecting “Task Manager”.
Then | wmiprvse.exe
Click over to the “Details” tab, then tap the “PID” column to sort running processes by process ID. And look for the process matching the ID number that appeared in the Event Viewer logs.
If the process has since closed, then you won’t see it in the list here. Also, when a program closes and then reopens. It will have a different process ID number. That’s why you have to look for recent events because the process ID number from older events in your Event Viewer won’t help you find anything.
So with this information in hand, you now know the process that may be causing problems. You can also search for its name on the web to find out the software it’s associated with. You can also just right-click the process in the list and tap “Open File Location” to open its location on your system. That may show you the larger software package the program is a part of. You may want to update this software if you use it, or uninstall it if you do not.
Can I Disable WMI (wmiprvse.exe)?
Sure you can! But should you guys turn it off? Not necessarily actually. This is because it is illogical to disable services in your PC just because they are most of the time super active.
Windows Management Instruction is an essential service that keeps track of hardware and software. Most importantly, your PC’s support tool may not work without this critical component as well. This will actually break many different things on your PC.
Turning it off WMI might not be the best way to go. It would be better to turn off services that are causing high CPU usage.
Conclusion
Alright, That was all Folks! I hope you guys like this wmiprvse.exe article and also find it helpful to you. Give us your feedback on it. Also if you guys have further queries and issues related to this article. Then let us know in the comments section below. We will get back to you shortly.
Have a Great Day!
Also See: What is Com Surrogate Doing in my PC – Is it a Virus?
