Very slow PC was WMI repository corruption

[Quatermass]

A post for info :

 

We had a PC recently that suddenly became grindingly slow, to the extent that most logon services would fail, explorer.exe would crash etc. Hardware absolutely fine, network connection too. Most confusingly, the machine was not really "slow" - it wasn't actually busy at all.

 

We noticed lots of 7034 errors in the event log for the WMI service as it repeatedly started and stopped. Turned out that was the culprit : a corrupt WMI repository. Cleared out "C:\Windows\System32\wbem\Repository", restarted the service (which recreates that folder's contents), rebooted and all was well.

 

Just thought I'd post in case it helps someone - we were totally baffled for a while!

[markwilfan]

You can also do winmgmt /resetrepository from within the wbem folder.