# WMI Provider Host utilizing excessive CPU



## Morthian (Mar 8, 2007)

I am trying to fix a computer that is running extremely slow. The computer runs on Windows 8 and is less than a year old, but the slowness would have you thinking it's more like ten years old. Avast detects nothing malicious, and there are no suspicious programs enabled in the start-up list. However, there is a process called WMI Provider Host that is ALWAYS using at least 15% - 20% of the CPU. Does anyone know why this might be and what I can do about it?


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## Tabvla (Apr 10, 2006)

If you look through many of the Tech Forums you will see a history of W8 users complaining about WMI Provider Host. In many cases, upgrading to W8.1 seems to resolve the issue because the complaints seem to be far less from W8.1 users.

The "percent" that you mention is of course relative to the system that you are monitoring. One may assume that with a CPU at the low-end of performance this percent would be higher than with a CPU at the high-end of performance.

On a standard configuration business-type desktop PC one may expect WMI-PH to average under 10% of CPU time which would have no impact on performance. It is worthwhile to remember that in most PC setups, during normal business-type activities, the CPU does almost nothing most of the time.

T.


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## Morthian (Mar 8, 2007)

I have seen many posts about the WMI Host Provider using excessive CPU, but I haven't come across anything helpful to me. The computer does have the most recent version of Windows 8. I'm not all that familiar with Windows 8. On my Windows 7 computer, the CPU usage is generally around 0-1% when idle. I don't see why a Windows process should ever need to use 20% of the CPU when the computer is idle.

I'm not sure if that process is really the problem, but this computer really is amazingly slow. When I open a video with VLC, the program can sometimes take over a full minute to load and appear on screen. Simply opening folders can sometimes take 15 seconds or more. Switching tabs in Chrome also usually takes an absurd amount of time to load, even if there are only very few tabs open. It's also not uncommon for tabs to crash, especially more intensive ones like Facebook.

I'm starting to believe this computer is just defective. I hope it still has a warranty...


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## Tabvla (Apr 10, 2006)

> Morthian wrote : ...... _The computer does have the most recent version of Windows 8_.....


Does that mean that you have applied all updates to W8 or does it mean that you have upgraded to W8.1..?

It is worth noting that W8.1 is not simply an update to W8, it is a new build of the OS. Microsoft could have called this build W9 rather than W8.1, as that may have been less confusing.

T.


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## Morthian (Mar 8, 2007)

Tabvla said:


> Does that mean that you have applied all updates to W8 or does it mean that you have upgraded to W8.1..?
> 
> It is worth noting that W8.1 is not simply an update to W8, it is a new build of the OS. Microsoft could have called this build W9 rather than W8.1, as that may have been less confusing.
> 
> T.


Yes, it is Windows 8.1. I just double checked to be sure.

While I do still believe this WMI Provider Host process to be a problem, I am also noticing that the hard drive is constantly making a lot of noise. Every time I do anything on the computer, even just switching through recently opened tabs in Chrome, the hard drive acts up like crazy. I have even noticed that when the computer has not be touched in a long time and there are no active programs running, I can still hear the hard drive constantly spinning.

So, I just opened up the resource monitor. I am not all that familiar with hard faults, but I have a basic understanding of what they are. I noticed there was a couple dozen faults per second. Then I started clicking through some very recently opened tabs in Chrome and saw it spike to well above 500 faults per second. The computer has 4GB of memory, 77% in use.

I then closed Chrome, which took a while and made the hard drive spin like crazy again, and saw it peak to over 800 faults per second. 50% memory now in use. Chrome is closed; no opened programs (that I know of) are active. Hard drive is still noisy. Hard faults ranging from about 5 to well over 100. (I'm typing this in WordPad because I closed the browser.)

Upon reopening Chrome, with the 11 previously opened tabs (most of which, if not all, are static web pages), I witnessed the the hard faults spike to over 1400. 70% memory now in use.

So, this definitely seems like a major issue, and if you or anyone here could offer any advice, it would much appreciated.


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## Tabvla (Apr 10, 2006)

Hi Morthian, thanks for providing all the info, it really helps to understand your system's behaviour.

Firstly, we need to clarify some of the points that you have mentioned in your last post.

*1. Hard Disk Spinning*

Hard disks spin continuously unless you force them to stop. Windows has a power setting where you can turn the hard disks OFF after a number of minutes inactivity, but I don't recommend that you do that. If you read the technical literature of most disk manufacturers they almost all state that disks are designed to spin constantly and that powering them down and then back up does more harm than good.

*2. Hard Disk Activity*

If you monitor Task Manager you will see that one of the key monitors is the Disk. But what do the Values or Percent actually mean. Computer components transfer data at different rates. To compensate for these differences Buffers are built into the system. In very simple terms when component A sends data to component B that data might first be sent to a Buffer to enable component B to accept the data when component B is ready. The Value that you observe with respect to Disk activity is the data that is moving in and out of the Buffer. It does not mean that the Disk is "going crazy". 
*
3. Hard Faults*

Microsoft have had a history of using the most unfriendly names to describe things. Hard Faults is one of those names. For starters a Hard fault is not a fault or an error - it is a normal part of data processing. When some data needs to be processed it is typically retrieved from RAM. When that data is not available in RAM it is then retrieved from the Page File (on the hard disk) and copied to RAM. That is what MS call a Hard Fault.

Data is moved around a computer system at a significant percent of the speed-of-light - that means really fast - and in terms of that a second is a really long time. Therefore 100+ Hard Faults per second is not unusual.

It does not matter if a web page is "static" as you call it. The Browser will be constantly refreshing that page and for the most part will be refreshing the page from the Page File - therefore if you have 11 Tabs open you can expect to receive a large number of Hard Faults.

*4. Memory (RAM) at 70% ++*

Windows 8.1 is a big chunk of software that has to do many things simultaneously. The more data that W8.1 can keep in RAM the faster it can do things. It takes almost 2GB of RAM just to run W8.1 smoothly. Add on other Memory-hungry software, such as your Antivirus, Mail, Live Tiles..... and you quickly use up another 1GB. So at 70% your Memory-usage seems just about right.

*5. Solution*

The good news is that I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with your system. If you were to increase the RAM to 6GB or better still 8GB, then I believe that all of the above issues would simply disappear. More RAM would significantly reduce the amount of disk activity because less use would be made of the Page File which would then reduce the number of Hard Faults and Memory-usage would drop to way below 50%.

T.


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