At times, you find that your WMI Provider Host process is consistently utilizing a significant chunk of the CPU. There have been reports that sometimes the process ends up using more than 50% of the CPU power, especially when media applications are in use. In this post, we will see how to troubleshoot WMI Provider Host High CPU Usage issue. But before we talk about ways to troubleshoot, let us take a quick look at what WMI Provider Host is.
What is WMI Provider Host
The service WMI Provider Host (WmiPrvSE.exe) is an acronym for Windows Management Instrumentation Provider Service. This is an important service, and it would be tough to manage applications without this process. If it is stopped, many of the system’s functionalities will become useless. Furthermore, users might not even receive notifications for various errors.
Is WmiPrvSE.exe a virus
The legit WmiPrvSE.exe or the Windows Management Instrumentation Provider Service process is located in the Windows/System32 folder, but malware can disguise themselves using this name and place themselves in any folder. So Thus, to isolate this possibility, check the Properties of the file and scan it with your antivirus.
WMI Provider Host High CPU Usage
Now coming back to the subject of this post, if you see it using high CPU, Run services.msc and restart the “Windows Management Instrumentation” Service and see if that helps you. If it does not help, try these suggestions.
1] Run System Maintenance Troubleshooter. To run the System Maintenance Troubleshooter. Open Run, type the following and hit Enter:
msdt.exe -id MaintenanceDiagnostic
Does it help?
2] Next, run the System Performance Troubleshooter. To do so, open an elevated Command Prompt, type the following and hit Enter to run the Performance Troubleshooter.
msdt.exe /id PerformanceDiagnostic
This troubleshooter helps the user adjust settings to improve operating system speed and performance.
3] Boot the system in Safe Mode with networking. If the system works fine in Safe Mode, then you may need to perform Clean Boot. You have to follow a different procedure to start Windows 10 in Safe Mode. Once there, select the option to start the system in ‘Safe mode with Networking’. So boot into Clean Boot State and then try and troubleshoot, identify and isolate the offending process manually. Once your wok is done, set the system to start normally.
4] Ideally, these steps should fix the issue of high CPU usage because of WMI Provider Host. However, in case the issue remains unresolved, to identify the offending process, you can also use the Event Viewer, then use it to identify errors.
Click Win+X menu and select Event Viewer. Click on View menu and select Show Analytic and Debug Logs. Next under Applications and Service Logs > Microsoft > Windows > WMI Activity, locate Operational log for WMI. Here search for possible errors and note down the ClientProcessID.
Now open Task Manager > Services tab and click on PID to arrange the processes by PID.
Find the process with the matching process ID under. This is the process that is causing WMI to use excessive CPU.
If you need more help, there is an advanced article on Technet that talks on troubleshooting high CPU usage in WMI components.