WMI Provider Host (WmiPrvSE.exe) stands for Windows Management Instrumentation. It is an integral part of the windows as it is the provider host process. It can allow other applications on your computer system to request information regarding your order. The process, however, must not use much of the computer resources but it might use much of CPU if another method on our computer system is behaving not in the right way.
Today we will teach you what it is and how you can fix WMI Provider Host (WmiPrvSE.exe). It is an interesting topic and hopefully, you will not see any more high CPU usage and disk usage.
Contents
What is WMI Provider Host (WmiPrvSE.exe)?
The windows management instrumentation is a windows feature that is used to provide a standard way for software and administrative scripts to request information regarding the state of your windows OS and the data on it.
The WMI is used to provide information when requested. For Example, the commands or software can find information regarding the state of Bitlocker drive encryption, view the entries made from the event log, or even request data from the installed apps which include a WMI provider. A list of WMI providers is present there on the website of Microsoft.
This is a convenient and beneficial feature for many enterprises that are used to manage PC’s all together, especially as information can be requested through scripts and then shown in a standard way in administrative consoles. None the less even on a home computer, some software that you have installed might request regarding the system via the WMI interface
To find a useful and beneficial piece of information we can use WMI, which usually is not exposed in the windows interface on your computer system. For example, the WMI can be used to get:
- The serial number of your computer system
- The model number of your system’s motherboard
- The smart health status of the hard drive
The WMI is an outstanding service, and it would instead become very tough and challenging to manage applications without this process. If it gets stopped, then many of the functions of the system will become useless. Moreover, users might not be able to receive information regarding various errors.
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Is WMI Provider Host WmiPrvSE.exe a Virus?
The Windows Management Instrumentation provider services, a process that is located in the windows or systems 32 folders. The malware, however, can disguise them by using this name or identity and then place themselves in any folder they wish to. Thus, for this to not occur, you need to check the properties of the particular file and then scan it with the help of your anti-virus.
Solved: How to Fix (An Administrator has Blocked you from running this app) in Windows 10.
WMI Provider Host (WmiPrvSE.exe) – Why is CPU Usage High?
The WMI provider host technically should not use much of the CPU as it should not be doing anything. It may sometimes use the CPU when any other piece of software or script there on your computer system asks for information through WMI, and that indeed is normal. The high CPU is, however, the sign that another app is requesting data through WMI. The prolonged and much usage of the CPU is a sign that something out there is wrong. The WMI provider host thus should not be using much of the CPU resources all the time.
If the Windows management instrumentation is stuck in a bad state, then it might be solved by restarting it. You may also restart your computer system, but there is a way to reset the service without rebooting your computer system.
Follow the steps:
- In the first step, all you need to do is open your start menu and then type service.msc and hit the enter button to launch the services tool.
- Then find the WMI service in the list and click right on this and then select restart.
If high CPU usage is being observed, it may be because the other processes on your computer system are misbehaving. If any process if requesting more information from the WMI providers, then it will cause the WMI provider host process to use more CPU. That other process is the actual problem. To identify which particular method is causing the problem with WMI, you have to use the Event Viewer on Windows 8 or 10.
How to Fix WMI Provider Host High CPU and Disk Usage Problem:
For this you need to:
- Click right on the start button and select the event viewer to open it
- If you have windows seven, then you need to open the start menu and then type eventvwr.msc and hit the enter button to launch it.
- On the left side of the event viewer, you need to go to applications and service Logs\Microsoft\Windows\WMI-Activity\Operational
- Now go through the list and then look for the recent error events.
- Click on each event and see for the number present to the right of client process id in the bottom pane. This tells us regarding the ID number of the process that has caused the WMI error
- The best thing about this is that over here, you can see much of the mistakes. The process ID number might cause the inaccuracies, or you might see multiple different process IDs causing errors. You need to click on each error and see what the client process id is to find about.
You can also pin a process down that is causing the problem. For this:
- In the first step you need to open the task manager, you can do this by clicking Ctrl + Shift + Escape or by clicking right on the taskbar and selecting the task Manager
- Now click over the details tab and then click on PID column to sort the running processes via process Id and then locate the process that is matching the ID number that appeared in the Event Viewer Logs
If the process has been closed, then you shall not be able to see it there in the list. Moreover, whenever a program closes and reopens, it shall come with a different process ID number. This is the reason that you need to look for recent occurring events as the process ID number from the earlier games in your event viewer shall not help you to find out anything.
With such information in hand, you now know that what might be causing the problem. You can also search for the name of the software that is associated with it on the web. For this:
- In the first step, you need to click right on the process
- Then you need to click on open file location to open its location there on your system that might show you with a larger software package of which the program is a part of.
- If you want to use the particular software, then you are required to update this. You can also uninstall this. It all depends on you.
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WMI Provider Host (WmiPrvSE.exe) – Can you stop it?
It is possible to disable the Windows management instrumentation services technically. This, however, will break a lot of different things on your computer system. It is a significant part of the Windows OS and therefore must be left alone.
As the official description for this service says, “If this service is stopped, most Windows-based software will not function properly.” So you do not need to disable the service. If you are having a problem with this then you need to identify the process on your computer system that is causing the WMI provider host to use much CPU and then update, remove or disable the particular process instead.
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NOTE: WMI Provider has been reported to cause problems in Windows 10 too! The fix is to follow the steps explained above. This is now also been happening in Windows 11 where the fixes mentioned above work.
Other Windows 10 Tutorials:
- How to Make a Pendrive Bootable using CMD in Windows 10/11.
- How to Setup Automatic Sign in and Login for Windows 10/11.
- How to Reinstall and Repair Microsoft App Store.
- How to Turn on SSH in Windows 10 Command-Line.
Is your CPU Usage still high?
In this guide, we have highlighted for you what is WMI Provider Host (WmiPrvSE.exe) and why it was causing high CPU usage in Windows 10. We have given the reason and provided some solutions to how this can be sorted out. Watching this tutorial will solve your WMI provider problems forever!
