WINMGMT

What is winmgmt.exe?
My windows ME works fine but after about 1.5 hours of
surfing a prog. WINMGMT starts up and gobbles memory
and resources. the the blue screen happens and I have to
powerdown. But if I catch it in time and elimate it in
time (ctrl+alt+del) then a can run all day. What makes
winmgmt.exe start up? I have tried delteing it re-naming
it but it rebuilds it self
in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\WBEM

help JOHN

John,

Winmgmt.exe can be called by a number of application including the PCHealth
Scheduler for Data Collection. I do not advise trying to delete winmgmt.exe
not that that is easy as you have found since it is protected against deletion
or amendment by Win Me's system file protection. What follows may or may not
be of interest.

PCHealth Scheduler for Data Collection:
The PCHealth entry in MSConfig | Startup and also in the Task Scheduler,
refers to the PCHealth Scheduler for Data Collection routine (pchschd.exe)
which launches winmgmt.exe to collect software and hardware configuration data
that can be accessed using Help & Support's System Information's History view.
In other words it allows you to see changes over a period of time to your
system such as drivers. The details collected are contained in the files
CollectedData???.xml files in the folder ..\windows\pchealth\helpctr\DataColl.

Note that all that pchschd.exe is doing every ten minutes is checking if the
system is idle or not. If idle it launches winmgmt.exe to collect the
information and sets itself to run again in 6 hours, if not it continues to
run at ten minute intervals until it finds the system is idle.

As to whether you need this historic data or not, only you can decide. A
number of us have long since decided to disable pchschd.exe having no use for
the collected data. It should be noted that if you contact MS or an OEM for
help that it is possible that they might request you send them these files.
If you do choose to disable pchschd.exe it is ESSENTIAL to delete/disable it
from both MSConfig | Startup and the Task Scheduler as otherwise the startup
entry will recreate the Task Scheduler entry when the system is rebooted.

One advantage of disabling the PCHealth Scheduler is that it minimizes the
chances of winmgmt.exe causing problems. What happens is that quite often
winmgmt.exe doesn't exit correctly when it has finished but instead remains
resident and using cpu cycles.

Note also that disabling these entries does NOT affect either System Restore
or System File Protect, nor AutoUpdate or your ability to use Help & Support,
all part of what Microsoft call "PCHealth".
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP



John wrote:

What is winmgmt.exe?
My windows ME works fine but after about 1.5 hours of
surfing a prog. WINMGMT starts up and gobbles memory
and resources. the the blue screen happens and I have to
powerdown. But if I catch it in time and elimate it in
time (ctrl+alt+del) then a can run all day. What makes
winmgmt.exe start up? I have tried delteing it re-naming
it but it rebuilds it self
in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\WBEM