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I am running Parallels 4.0 on my iMac. I recently cloned over my work PC as a virtual machine. The VM is XPsp3. The VM starts fine. But shortly after login the wmiprvse.exe process pegs the CPU out at 100%. No other applications can start and the desktop response becomes extremely slow.

I can go in and manually kill the .exe via Task Mgr. A new instance starts shortly that behaves properly.

What could be causing this? Bad hardware driver? Failed initialization of a port? I have other XP VM that behave fine.

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Please specify what .exe is using 100% CPU, it would help to know. – Zoran Sep 23 at 17:36
He did say Zoran. wmiprvse.exe – A Dwarf Sep 23 at 18:21

1 Answer

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The cloning may have done it. Hardly ever can you successfully clone a XP installation into a different system, much less a VM. There's a whole range of things that may be forcing wmiprvse.exe on a wild loop.

Start your XP Client in safe mode. If wmiprvse.exe behaves this time, it's almost certainly a device. Check any devices like printers and faxes on your XP Client. Uninstall them while still in safe mode. Do the same for any network cards. Reboot in normal mode. wmiprvse.exe should behave now.

No? Confirm if this may be the problem: KB 925623
Still no? Enable WMI logging and restart the service:

  1. Alter the following registry values:
  2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WBEM\CIMOM\Logging to 2.
  3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WBEM\CIMOM\Logging File Max Size to 500000.
  4. Stop the WMI service with net stop winmgmt. If it fails, try winmgmt /kill
  5. Restart the service with net start winmgmt, or reboot if it fails to start.

The log file located at %windir%\system32\wbem\logs should give you an hint on what it is doing and what is probably going wrong. I however suspect you will get the problem fixed with just the second paragraph :)

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Actually there are dozens of tools available including the free VMWare converter that will more than happily convert a physical machine to virtual, including XP. – MarkM Sep 23 at 18:29
The word "clone" on the question didn't make me think he used a converter like VMWare Converter or MakeVM. In any case, something definitely went wrong. I think you should turn your comment into an answer though. It's useful information. Should become more visible. – A Dwarf Sep 23 at 18:56
Clone was a poor choice of words. I used the Parallels Transporter for PC application to prepare a install image and then used the Parallels Transporter for Mac to pull said image into a VM on my iMac. – TomB Sep 24 at 14:47
I'm not familiar with Parallels Transporter. However, the problem might be fixed from within the Windows Client. Hopefully my answer handles it. I have your question as a Favorite ever since I first saw it. I'm pretty much interested in knowing if it works for you, or if you just gave up or found some other solution. – A Dwarf Sep 24 at 15:52
When I got home last night I took a much deeper look at this. It seems that the thing that kicks this off is starting Outlook. Around a minute after it starts, the wmiprvse.exe process cranks up to 100% CPU utilization. I can't get Outlook to close by normal means so I end up having to kill the process. After that wmiprvse.exe goes back to normal. I can then restart Outlook with no problems and no CPU issues. – TomB Sep 25 at 13:06

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