What is the WMI Provider Host and why is it eating my CPU?

Photo by Luis Gonzalez on Unsplash

The WMI Provider Host, also known as WmiPrvSE.exe, is a Windows system process that provides information about the performance and status of software and hardware components on a computer. It is a part of the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) infrastructure, which is used by many system management tools and applications.