Process Information

Process File: wdfmgr.exe
Process Name: Windows Driver Foundation Manager

Author: Microsoft Corp.
Part Of: Microsoft Windows Media Player

Description:
wdfmgr.exe is part of Microsoft Windows media player 10 and above. This process decreases compatibility problems whilst the product is in use.

wdfmgr.exe is a Microsoft's User Mode Driver Manager service. This service gets installed on Windows XP when you either install Windows Media Player 10, or when you upgrade to Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. Introduced in September 2004. This service is part of the new device driver strategy from Microsoft for Windows 2000/XP/2003 and future versions of Windows: this strategy, the Windows Driver Foundation (WDF), aims to make it significantly simpler to write drivers for tomorrow's Windows environments which hopefully will lead to higher quality and more reliable drivers; it also aims to ensure that, in future, buggy or badly written drivers will not have the detrimental or catastrophic effects that they have nowadays (freezes, instability, Windows not booting up, illegal operations, etc..); finally, the new strategy also aims to ensure that many more drivers will be installable without the PC needing to be logged in as Administrator or with Administrator privileges.
Starting with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Media Player 10, Microsoft is adding the WDF framework to Windows 2000/XP/2003 to enable peripheral manufacturers to start producing WDF drivers.

For technical users: this particular service, WDFMGR, implements the user-mode driver framework of the new WDF driver strategy. This framework enables developers to create drivers for network connected devices, and some USB devices, where the drivers run in user mode rather than kernel mode but still behave as standard Plug-and-Play drivers.

This program is non-essential process to the running of the system, but should not be terminated unless suspected to be causing problems.
This service, introduced in September 2004, is now an essential service which you should leave running as, in 2006, many manufacturers have now produced WDF drivers and WDFMGR will therefore be needed for those drivers.

Note: Any malware can be named anything - so you should check where the files of the running processes are located on your disk. If a non-Microsoft.exe file is located in the C:\Windows or C:\Windows\System32 folder, then there is a high risk for a virus, spyware, trojan or worm infection!

Recommendation for wdfmgr.exe:
Not a critical component, but see the information above before disabling it.

System Process: No
Application: Yes
Background Process: Yes
Uses Network: No
Uses Internet: No