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WMI Host Provider high CPU when running Garmin Express

This was also reported in the thread about GE using 20% CPU, but I thought the WMI-specific issue should be highlighted in its own thread. The problem was also reported in the Forerunner 945 forum. I had been trying to figure this out for a while until I saw that post. Sure enough, quitting out of GE made the high WMI CPU usage stop.

GE 6.19.3.0

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  • Same issue here. GE 6.21.0.0.

    For what it's worth, I noticed high CPU% on my laptop, quickly narrowed it down to WmiPrvSE and then after two days of digging into it couldn't figure it out, went closing apps and services methodically and surely enough when I closed Garmin Express in the tray my CPU% went from ~40% down to near-zero. And of course afterwards, adding "garmin" to "wmiprvse high cpu" in my google search immediately lead me to this forum.

    From what I could gather, Garmin Express tray app sends WMI queries to the computer asking to give it a list of connected devices every two seconds; presumably to detect when your Garmin device gets plugged in. This causes WmiPrvSE to do some heavy lifting behind the scenes as it scans through all hardware devices visible to the OS. Sounds like poor coding practice to me (personal opinion, I'm not a developer).

  • ditto to "No Express running - CPU is ok."

  • Same for me when I recently upgraded this. Very poor that Garmin can let this go on so long and waste so many peoples time trying to diagnose what's going on with their PCs.

  • You guys probably ought to contact Garmin directly about this, it doesn't happen for me and the number of complaints is relatively small, so i suspect it's an issue specific with your PCs.

  • I contacted support months ago. They were aware of the problem at the time and said they were working on it. They recommended keeping Express turned off until it's needed and then turning off after syncing.

    The number of complaints is not as small as it may seem because, at first, the generic complaint was about high cpu cycles. Then, about a month or so after, wmiprvse was identified as the affected process. 

  • Same problem here!  Let's have a solution please Garmin!!!

  • I've tested this on three different W10 pc, An i7 XPS 13 w 8GB of memory, an older lenovo notebook and an i5 desktop. All SSD, up to date and all suffer from the same WMI slowdown issue with G Express running. Removed it from two because it was a just a test. I don't let it auto start in the other.  You might want to do a search on WMI. This has been an issue for many for quite a while and I'd bet most will never figure out why their modern PC's are dragging.

  • The number of complaints is not as small

    Absolutely agree. This is not simple to figure out, what causes CPU running high. I am computer professional and it was even for me hard to understand the problem. I don't even say about average users. So, problem exists and number of complains could be significantly higher.

  • Yep, that's what I gather as well.

    So, anybody willing to speculate / check where this pickle resides exactly and what triggers it? As some forum participants do not seem to be impacted by it?

    As a starting point I disconnected all external USB devices today I have - quite a few, I must admit:wireless keyboard and mouse , cameras, drives, USB hub etc. - but to no avail. NB I'm on Windows 10 1909.

    Having said that: my PC does have two internal USB devices that I would not be able to disconnect unless drivers are de-installed: SD card reader and WiFi/Bluetooth card.

    EDITED TO ADD: I just installed it afresh on my Windows 8.1 laptop to test it - and with exactly the same result from the moment GE was installed and run (well, spikes were much higher as it's Intel gen 3 CPU, so bit dated and weaker than my PC that hosts Intel gen 6 CPU). Again, laptop is fitted with SD card reader and WiFi/Bluetooth card - supplied by the same vendors actually: Realtek & Intel respectively.

  • I have just spent a couple hours of my time trying to figure out what was wrong with my system, with WMI Provider Host hogging resources. After a dozen restarts or so, each with different sets of enabled startup processes/services, I also came to the conclusion it was Garmin Express.

    Just exiting the tray icon solves it so I went ahead and disabled it altogether.

    Upon searching online I found this thread which has been opened for 5 months! Come on Garmin! Do your job, fix this!

    Sometimes I wonder why are we still buying devices from Garmin…