On my windows 2008 server (64bit) I started having a problem whereby the wmiprvse.exe process was consuming up to 40% of my CPU (22% average) and causing major slowdown of my system.
I managed to narrow this down to the "Windows System Resource Manager" and if I stopped this service, then the problem would go away. None of the solutions I found on Google applied to my scenario or my OS, which is one of the issues I guess I will face for running windows 2008 server as a workstation.
Anyway after much searching, I discovered the following hot fix solved my problem, despite the fact that the symptoms or cause do not apply to my scenario at all as I am not doing any monitoring from an external machine. After installing this hot fix, my average CPU usage for wmiprvse.exe is now around 10% and only seems to hit about 20% max, so it is an improvement. Of course if you do not need the Windows System Resource Manager then you could just disable this permanently.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970520
Note that the hot fix says it is for Vista, but it does also apply to windows 2008 server.
Oct 5, 2009 at 10:35 AM WOW, unbelievable , I had 700+ processes which are managed by WSRM, wmiprvse.exe was doing 15% on average.
After I installed 970520 and 970067 it's doing maybe 1% and still WSRM manages the priority accurately. THANKS