If there is it is not in their documentatioin…
Seems I had the exact same problem as you all did… But no longer, or so it seems thus far…
I noticed that some of you seemed to have just installed your Passport drive, which I also recently did without activating any of the WD Smartware backup functions. Realizing that nothing was backed up while I was yet having this same problem with WDFME.EXE hogging a steady 50% of my CPU while making my laptop hang over and over again for many minutes at a time, well, I decided to go ahead and rightclick on the WD Passport Essential icon in the traybar and get myself oriented… While there I decided to do the opposite of some of you guys and thus to initiate the backup functions. Seeing no way of selecting what to back up and what not to backup I simply allowed it to backup all…
Voila, once the software was done backing it all up (including also my multi-GB sized Outlook .pst file!..) Well, the WDFME.EXE file is no longer doing much of anything and is certainly no longer hogging my CPU…
Hoping this will help someone…
Praise the Lord of Hosts, the Creator of the universe, the Redeemer and Savior who pulls each of us step by little step out of the specific problems we run into from time to time!
May the peace of the Ancient of Days rest over each of our families and homes as we each do our best towards learning and doing whatever He guides each of us to do while working in His vineyard!
Tree of Life (c)
PS. Just in case anyone is interested in either my Health & Longevity web page, or perhaps even my Ancient Chronology pages where I am continually publishing my decade long research results… Well, you are invited to visit my website at http://adamoh.org
Windows 7.SP1 64bit
Even with my drives disconnected, the WDFME process takes over my computer - I can barely type when it gets going. I think it’s basically cooked my motherboard by now driving the CPU so hard.
Don’t go wack-a-wack. Just bring up your task manager and stop the WDFME.exe. Life will get better in short order.
I’ve already killed the process.
Now trying to work out to be able to run a password protected Passport without having to manually deal with this little monster every time.
I ran my start up manager and stopped both of the WD items from starting. This fixed everything for me. Then like several other folks I made a short cut to the password controller and fire up the rascal when I want.
But, I am still trying to run it right.
I resolved this by doing the following in Windows.
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Launch services.msc (Start menu → Run → services.msc)
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Stop WD File Management Engine (Right click → Stop)
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Change service from Automatic to Manual (Right click → Properties → Startup type: Manual)
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From now on when you want it to startup, simply start service via services.msc. You can stop it via Task Manager or service.msc. I start it before bed and stop in the morning. A pain, but this will prevent it from starting upon reboot.
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I’ve turned it off using msconfig.exe
Hey ClarkD good advice. Thanks a ton.
This process is file management engine in Smartware. Killing this service stops the backup from running and will also cause the UI to not load correctly. If you are getting bad performance, make sure you are on 1.4.5.2. We recently made some changes to improve memory and processor utilization in certain systems.
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Brandon thanks for the information. I will do as you suggested and try to update the software. More news to follow.
Already on 1.4.5.2. No problem on my 32 bit machine, but it kills my 64 bit - makes it completely unusable while running.
Well that is what is happening to me. But, I have been doing this a little at a time. So I will uninstall everything and start over again. I am sure WD did not mean for this to be a problem.
Sorry Brandon, but there is much improvement needed. I have the latest update with a dual processor and 4GB of memory and my machine still gets locked up. I can only run before I go to bed.
Thanks for the feedback, we are investigating this issue. This symptom is spread around a few different problems so a fix for one set of users may not effect another.
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Brandon, good point about multi-problems across multi-platforms, may require multi-fixes.
I just called WD and was transferred to level 2 tech support after level 1 could not fix this issue.
Apparently the WDFME.EXE resource hog issue is a “known issue” and is being worked on by
the engineers. He could not tell me when this would be fixed but said it would be fixed in a
future update to the software. He suggested doing a backup and then either stopping the WDFME.EXE
process from task manager or just unintalling the software still you next update and the update is available.
My WDFME.EXE file was taking 100% of my CPU during file catagorization process and then stuck at 50% after it was done. This was BEFORE I even plugged the external hard drive in. After pluggin it in makes no difference to me.
I’ll wait for the update and do weekly backups only and stop the process of the file in between backups for now I guess. You’d think that “engineers” as they called them would have the brains to test of all OS platforms before releasing the software.
“You’d think that “engineers” as they called them would have the brains to test of all OS platforms before releasing the software.”
I’ve known more than a few cases where marketing/management have ordered completely inappropriate software to be released with OEM devices despite what engineering ask for.
I’ve also left a few teams where such cowardly sloppiness has been mandated by management.
Just to keep the fun going with this little rascal, I decided to uninstall and reinstall the whole thing. Yikes, I get a fatal error #1603 from WD saying they can;t uninstall WD and to contact the support folks. Just for ducks, I will keep this group informed as a try again.
Thread moved to WD Software & Accessories: WD Smartware.
