VSMON, WMIPRVSE and ADVWindowsClientApp

So, I was checking my email and listening to some digital music on my Dell 1720 with Windows Vista. I noticed that every so often the music stutters. I’ve noticed it before, but I don’t usually listen to music on my lappie. So, I did some investigating and didn’t find an answer.I noticed that the stuttering seemed to be associated with internet traffic. I closed my browser and the stuttering still occurred, but with less frequency. I crack open Task Manager and notice that vsmon.exe is eating my processor like a fresh donut. I know vsmon is the ZoneAlarm app. I’m not willing to sacrifice my firewall and virus protection just to listen to some music, so I look down the list and in second place is wmiprvse.exe. I’ve seen it before. It’s something to do with Windows Management Instrumentation whatever. I did some research to find out what the beast is really up to and I came across this MSDN entry, “Is WMIprvse a real villain?” I was leaning towards answering, “yes.”

I read the article did the logging and tracing and found that if WMIprvse isn’t the villain, it’s certainly an accomplice. I found that some iwbemservices thing was checking the performance “instrumentation” with alarming frequency. Great. So, what is this and why does it hate me?

Turns out that ADVWindowsClientApp, used for Amazon Unboxed Video-On-Demand, was frequently checking the internet for something. Don’t know. Don’t care. Turned it off and now, I can enjoy my music.

Basically, vsmon was monitoring internet traffic as it should and I suspect uses the wmiprvse or more specifically the iwbem stuff to sniff or record activity. Everytime Amazon checked the internet a chain of CPU-intensive events caused my music to stutter.

HTH