Thursday, April 5, 2012

WmiPrvSE.exe blocking SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 setup

Error while Installing Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2008 R2

While installing SP 1 for SQL Server 2008 R2 i came across the following error during the installation “Check File In Use” page:

The ‘WmiPrvSE.exe’ process is not controlled by the update wizard. You have to manually stop this process to avoid a computer restart

This executable is a provider created to launch multiple instances of WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) and if you kill it from Task Manager then each new request to the service will launch a new thread. Only way to stop this from happening is stop Windows Management Instrumentation service

Once stopped the setup runs perfectly fine

2 comments:

  1. I actually just run into this issue while I was patching SQL 2008R2. It seems that monitoring services will somehow lock WMI with the SQL service. Not sure what causes that but stopping the SQL server service seems to release the WMI locks.

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  2. I ran into this issue today.Thank you for sharing.

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