[aldiboronti]

Don't know if anybody else has experienced this. I suddenly noticed that, after bootup and everything had loaded, the hourglass would suddenly appear again and stay there for about 20-30 secs. Next time I booted I ran Filemon to discover what was going on. It turned out to be a Windows program called wmiexe, details of which I found here:

http://www.bits.bris.ac.uk/mxcl/tweaks/wmiexe.php

I'm just about to follow the site's advice to stop the damn thing (luckily I have Windows 98, where it's easier to do). I'll repost with results.

[aldiboronti]

Worked like a charm! I went into MSDOS, renamed wmiexe.exe wmiexe.bak (it resides in Windows/System) and rebooted. Problem gone!
I don't know where this thing came from, wasn't happening a few days ago, but it's really sneaky. As the website above says, it isn't triggered at startup by any of the usual ways, ie registry, ini files etc; it starts as part of Systray!
A big thank you to Filemon; this little program is worth its weight in gold (though it's free) for tracking down mysterious processes.
I'll post a URL for it when I edit.

Here it is.

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.shtml

[TonyKlein]

Well, I can tell you where that thing came from.

It came from your Windows Setup cabs, and if you're running Win98 SE, from Win98_45 cab more specifically.

It's part of WMI - Windows Management Instrumentation, to be precise, and if you ask me what it does, I REALLY don't know...


I did see the article Aldiboronti drew our attention to, but previously always dismissed it as yet another snake oil case.

However, Mosaic1 told me she'd renamed the file without any dire consequeces a long time ago, so I followed her example.

Honestly, I can't say I've noticed any great improvement in Bootup time, but the file's certainly not missed by Windows.

In conclusion, everyone who'd like to rename the file sure has my blessings!