many wsmprovhost.exe processes

[C_A_M]

On some of our Windows Server 2012 (not R2) servers, we are finding that wsmprovhost.exe processes are getting launched and never terminating. We would like to to determine why they are being launched and/or why they are not terminating, because unless I go in and manually terminate them, these servers will eventually run out of memory.

Here is what I have observed:

• The full command line is: c:\Windows\system32\wsmprovhost.exe -Embedding
• A new process is launched every hour.
• The start time is the same minute and second after the hour for every process on the same server. Each server has a different start time, but all servers are within about a minute of each other. For example, on one server, every process started at 6 minutes and 43 seconds after the hour; on another server the start time is 7 minutes and 7 seconds after each hour.
• This seems to affect only servers running IIS.
• The parent process is: c:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe -k DcomLaunch

Can anyone help troubleshoot why this is happening?

Thanks,
Cam

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