Tag Archives: wmi provider

WMI Provider Host spikes CPU usage

The last couple of weeks my computer (running Windows 8.1) was working so hard steam came out of the exhaust. In the Task Manager I found WMI Provider Host was using about 25% of the CPU on my system.

On StackExchange the same question is answered. To find which services depend on WMI Provider Host: open Computer Management > Services > Windows Management Instrumentation and go to tab Dependencies.

Windows Management Instrumentation

Dell Data Vault causes problems

I’ve performed a Windows Clean Boot to find the service which was causing this. The spike takes place a couple of minutes after a reboot. In the end it turned out the Dell Data Vault / Dell Data Vault Wizard was the cause of this.

Afterwards I found Dell was aware of problems with these services, but running the Dell PC Checkup didn’t give any results…

Update (2015-07-30):
I just did a reinstall of Dell SupportAssist and this uninstalled the Dell Data Vault / Wizard programs. I couldn’t figure out what these programs are doing anyway. Dell Support said they collect data from .dll files, but not why this done.