Strange problem with WinMgmt.exe under Win2K
 

A week ago I upgraded my hard drive from 120GB to 200GB. Using Paragon's Drive Backup, I backed up all my partitions and restored them to the new drive. I've used Drive Backup before and I know it's pretty reliable. My new drive has all the same partitions, identical in size and order. The extra space will be used for trying out Linux.

Currently, I can dual-boot between Windows XP and Windows 2000.... XP is working fine but there's a strange problem with Win2K that wasn't there before. Basically, when I first boot-up, a program called WinMgmt.exe hogs between 95% and 99% of the CPU cycles for three whole minutes - making it almost impossible to start any other application. After 3 minutes or so, it settles down and everything works okay.

I've googled this problem and I found that WinMgmt.exe might be infected with a virus. However, I scanned my drive using both Ad-Aware and AVG anti-virus, neither of which found anything. I also found a link which recommended that I run wmimgmt.msc and check that it's set to log errors only - and that it's not in verbose mode. I've done that but it hasn't made any difference.

Can anyone think of a reason why WinMgmt.exe has suddenly started behaving like this?

1. Start / Run / wmimgmt.msc / OK.

2. Right-click WMI Control (Local) and press Properties.

3. Select the Logging tab.

4. Check the Errors only radial button.

5. Press Apply and OK.

Thanks - but I already tried that. I've even set it up for no logging at all but that didn't make any difference either.

Whatever it's doing for those first 3 minutes, it doesn't appear to be accessing my hard drive (the hard drive LED doesn't light up).

I have noticed a couple of unusual things though - firstly, while all this is going on, Task Manager shows 2 copies of WinMgmt.exe running. Neither of them can be shut down. Secondly, once those first 3 minutes are up, control seems to get tranferred to WinLogon.exe which then hogs the processor for about 15-20 seconds. After that, everything settles down.

I'd really like to know what on earth is going on because it's very frustrating to have to wait over 3 minutes before I can even launch my first app.