A friend of mine has an issue of slowness.Running taskmanager process manager found the culprit wmiprvse.exe .The processor (2.2 ghz celeron)spikes to 60% every 3-5 seconds.Ive tried disabling it in the process menu and it comes right back.I've checked for registry entries relating it to a virus or suspicious exe locations.No out of the ordinary programs installed.I read it could be a internet card or chipset driver causing the issue.The 10/100 port is on the board.I updated it to the latest driver and the problem stopped.I rebooted it thinking I had it and it came back.Now I'm suspecting the 10/100 port is n/g.I don't have a spare card around to back my theory but I'm at wits end.Any ideas ?

Windows XP pro SP3
1gb ram
Celeron 2.2ghz
40gb hard drive

Sounds like a virus.

http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32sonebotb.html

-spence

I checked the registry already for those two entries.They were non existant .

That has to do with the WMI (Windows Management) Services, probably something else is kicking off that process to go nuts. Need to find out what is causing it but probably not the wmi process

The pc has avast running on it.I'm not familiar with that program but I decided to give it one more shot before suggesting a reformat and clean install.I ran a scan on it for malware and found 362 files infected.Had tons of spyware,a couple trojans,and a few rogues.First time I've seen rogues but after the registry was repaired and files deleted the spiking stopped.Just because a PC is running antirus software doesn't mean it isn't infected pretty bad.Thanks for the help.

spybot

Spybot + http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Prevx CSI is good to find (free) and clean (pay)