wmiprvse.exe pegging a CPU

Pretty much since the beginning I've noticed wmiprvse.exe hogging one of two cores in my test machine.

Seaching elsewhere I saw a suggestion to see what file handles were open by the process. I don't think this tells us very much:

C:WindowsSystem32&gthandle c:|find &quot4160&quot

WmiPrvSE.exe pid: 4160 8: C:WindowsSystem32

WmiPrvSE.exe pid: 4160 7C: C:WindowsSystem32en-USuser32.dll.mui

WmiPrvSE.exe pid: 4160 288: C:WindowsWinSxSamd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.9200.16384_none_418c2a697189c07f

I can kill the wmiprvse.exe process from Task Manager, but it tends to re-appear an hour later (+/- 30 min.).

I haven't tricked out Windows 8 very much... but due to the lack of any matches in these forums when searching for &quotwmiprvse.exe cpu&quot I am guessing my situation is not common. First thing I did was remove antivirus, but the problem continues.

I'm sure I can start a brand new clean install of Windows 8, and slowly add things back until the problem recurs but that's not exactly optimized troubleshooting.

Found a blog post about using netmon to diagnose this kind of problem, but the winmgmt svchost process has 0 network traffic during the time that wmiprvse.exe is consuming a core.

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