Blasted Windows Management Instrumentation service!

[Deja Q]

I hate Windows!

Today I had an emergency task to see why the Division Manager's computer ran so slowly.

I did complete virus and worm checks. I did complete trojan and spyware checks. Not an anomaly was found.

I downloaded a program that checks to see what programs get started up (via startup folder icon, registry, and the old-school win.ini file). Nothing unusual there.

I updated all the software and service patches. Made no difference.

I ultimately discovered that a service that ran WINMGMT.EXE (Windows Management Instrumentation) kept getting stuck in the "stopping" process.

But I did discover that WINMGMT was set to keep retrying the same process if it failed to start. I told it to abort after the 3rd try. I rebooted again and the system did finally respond. All the typical apps loaded properly, though I didn't check EVERY app...

As WMI was set as Manual, along with WMI Driver Extensions (though this one did register as being 'started'), I'm still clueless as to what started it. I've never seen any of our apps use WMI/WINMGMT.EXE and there was no trace of unauthorized programs.

Kooky stuff.

Unless there's a new worm, out in the wild... :scared: ???