Can I turn off WMI service permanently?

Question

I'm tired of seeing my laptop sporadically consume 100% disk usage and gigabytes of memory. Most of the time the problem is on "Windows Management Instrumentation" service. Beside disk I/O consumption, it also often take a lot memory.

I just disable that WMI service for 7 hours now. Everything is really going well. I'm curious is there any downside of turning of this service ? All my need for computer are just Emacs, Chrome, Command Console, and Microsoft Office.

PS. I'm using Windows 10

Solution 1

I'd like to point out what you actually lose by disabling WMI. My laptops are not going to be managed remotely, so WMI seems to be unneeded. I have disabled it via Servies -> Winmgmt and my devices seem to run almost fine.

Almost, because there are some functions that you can't use when WMI is disabled, even loacally! The downsides to disabling WMI that I have experienced so far are:

• the Dependencies-view in Services which will no longer be populated. Opening this view will instead show the following error message:

• Silent Option (an MSI tool to output and configure fan speed) will no longer function, it will show no controls and will not allow you to customize the fan speed.

Solution 2

Here's is but a small sampling of what can be done via WMI. This this list was extracted from WMIExplorer 2.00

While you can definitely disable it, a lot can be done remotely with the WMI interface. I can connect to computers remotely, install printers, do inventory, and more.

Windows comes with a bunch of printing scripts here:

C:\Windows\System32\Printing_Admin_Scripts\en-US\

prncnfg.vbs prndrvr.vbs prnjobs.vbs prnmngr.vbs prnport.vbs prnqctl.vbs pubprn.vbs

That will no longer work.

Comments

[Seth]

It doesn't sound like you actually need Windows. But as for your question: If it is a regular service you can choose to disable it. Various parts of Windows itself and other programs tend to use WMI. You can do all sorts of things using WMI like watching a folder for changes; list installed software or read current system configuration. Depending on what you do you might see errors. That said there is probably a different reason for your WMI service spiking like that.

[Sake]

I need Windows for Microsoft Office.

[zx485]

Disabling WMI is probably not the way to go. I guess that it would be better to only disable the services that consume too much CPU time.

[Debra]

Is this a personal or company computer? WMI doesn't usually tax resources unless your system is doing an inventory, i.e. to for SCCM or other enterprise tool. Can you turn off WMI? - sure. SHOULD you turn it off? - not necessarily, because it's illogical to turn off services just because they are sometimes very active. WMI keeps track of the hardware and installed software & versions. Your laptop vendor's support tools may not work without it. OTOH, MS says "WMI can be used in all Windows-based applications, and is most useful in enterprise applications and administrative scripts."

[DrMoishe Pippik]

If Office is the only Windows application you use, look at LibreOffice.