Latest ESET update breaks WMI

[Aurosonic 4]

After the eset update (which happened between 21.00 1-st May and 01:00 2-nd may) I’ve encountered a problem when most of my gadgets says WMI broken. I wasn’t sure which software exactly broke it, so i’ve started analizing. I revert back to my previous closest windows state which was backup at April 18-th. Backup made with Acronis True Image. Right after first boot WMI works fine until next reboot. I’ve mentioned that right after the first boot eset updates it’s data base, so i’ve decided to recover previous windows state again with turned off LAN adapter so no internet connection involved.  And WMI worked fine. I’ve uninstalled ESET and turned on internet again. Rebooted PC and no issue with WMI. Then i’ve installed ESET again and it instantly broke WMI after reboot. So it’s definitely related to ESET. And i’m unable to restore WMI even after uninstalling ESET. I guess that latest database update makes some permanent changes related to WMI. Maybe in windows Registry or somewhere else. Not sure. But even WMI recovery from it’s backup made from wmimgmt.msc doesn’t help nore wmi database reset. Only windows recover to previous state before eset database update. I’m on Windows 11 with latest updates. Ready to provide any additional info if needed to find the source of WMI break.

[Marcos 4,198]

(Un)fortunately we have no reports of such issue with ESET. Please open a support ticket with your local ESET distributor for further troubleshooting. The best would be if you could provide a disk or vm image where the issue is reproduced right after installing ESET.

[Aurosonic 4]

10 hours ago, Marcos said:

(Un)fortunately we have no reports of such issue with ESET. Please open a support ticket with your local ESET distributor for further troubleshooting. The best would be if you could provide a disk or vm image where the issue is reproduced right after installing ESET.

Just tried it with clean install of Windows 10. Absolutely same behavior! Started two gadgets that works perfectly. Then installed ESET. During ESET Database update one of the gadgets stoped working with "Something went wrong" message. And after reboot both gadgets shows "Broken WMI" ! It's easy to replicate. I've mentioned with registry analyzer that ESET makes changes in registry branche WMI Security. Probably that's the issue.

[Aurosonic 4]

i've check event monitor for WMI-Activity and it's flooded with WMI error Code 5858

[Aurosonic 4]

Here's before and after latest ESET update. I'm working with ESET and gadget over 5 years and this happens only after the last ESET update of one of it's modules.

[Aurosonic 4]

And another mention: After latest ESET update WMI Provider Host / WmiPrvSE.exe constantly loads CPU. It was at 0% CPU usage before the update

[Aurosonic 4]

Problem solved! Found out "Smart Optimization" option was the issue that broke the WMI. Turned it off right before the ESET update solved all the problems.

[itman 1,370]

14 minutes ago, Aurosonic said:

Found out "Smart Optimization" option was the issue that broke the WMI. Turned it off right before the ESET update solved all the problems.

The Smart Optimization option exists whether ThreatSense settings do; Real-time protection, Malware scans, Web Access Protection, etc.. I really can't see how this setting is related to your WMI problems.

[MartinPe 8]

2 hours ago, itman said:

The Smart Optimization option exists whether ThreatSense settings do; Real-time protection, Malware scans, Web Access Protection, etc.. I really can't see how this setting is related to your WMI problems.

After reading this post, I was having the same issue with the WMI process. But in my case, it was the AMD User Experience feature of the Catalyst driver. Stopping it fixed the problem for me. The process was AUEPMaster.exe.