Ever since I installed Windows 8.1 x64 Pro I have had a WUDFHost.exe process running.  Using Process Hacker and Process Explorer and with a little help and some registry sleuthing I have finally identified it as hosting my two external USB backup drives, G: and H:.

I have also verified, through process logs I have been capturing every night since early in 2010, that WUDFHost did NOT run as part of Windows 7 x64, even though I had these same drives plugged-in.

Given the above, my question is this:

Is it a given that WUDFHost must run when there is an external USB disk drive present on Windows 8.1? 

Or is it there because of specific settings?

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong - in fact my system is perfectly stable.  It's just that I want to know why things run.  Ideally, if they don't need to be running, but I have some media sharing setting somewhere set wrong that correcting would cause WUDFHost not to run my system would be leaner and have more resources for my work.

Thanks in advance for any insights you may have on this.

Thanks for your thoughts.  I'm kind of beyond the information at the "is it malware?" sites at this point.

About as close as I have ever gotten to installing "media device"-specific software was that I plugged our iPad in one time in order to be able to copy some images / videos off it.  It did some auto-install of driver(s) when first plugged-in.  I do NOT have iTunes or any other media management / transfer software outside of the WMP and WMC that Microsoft provides.  I also regularly plug my Canon EOS camera into a USB to get the photos off it.  Both go in alternate USB ports to the ones the backup drives are plugged-into full time.

Out of curiosity, britishdhez, are you running external USB drives and do you see WUDFHost.exe running on your system?  I probably won't pursue this much further unless someone chimes in and says they don't have WUDFHost to run their external USB drives.  It might just be normal for Windows 8.1.

You can start another research from here

http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/wudfhost.exe.html

based on different users experience this WUDFhost even you can find at XP

And the trigger supposed to be related to media device, media file or media player 

Did you install specific media player, or software related to sync media to others devices rather than your USB external HDD?

• Edited by britishdhez Monday, August 18, 2014 7:27 AM

You can start another research from here

http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/wudfhost.exe.html

based on different users experience this WUDFhost even you can find at XP

And the trigger supposed to be related to media device, media file or media player 

Did you install specific media player, or software related to sync media to others devices rather than your USB external HDD?

• Edited by britishdhez Monday, August 18, 2014 7:27 AM

You can start another research from here

http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/wudfhost.exe.html

based on different users experience this WUDFhost even you can find at XP

And the trigger supposed to be related to media device, media file or media player 

Did you install specific media player, or software related to sync media to others devices rather than your USB external HDD?

• Edited by britishdhez Monday, August 18, 2014 7:27 AM

I can find it at my office PC which running with VDI, but cant test plug USB external HDD

I will be doing some research this weekend 

I will also try to create new partition and installed new Windows (7, 8 and 8.1) to check whether this process running by default

• Edited by britishdhez 8 hours 25 minutes ago

I can find it at my office PC which running with VDI, but cant test plug USB external HDD

I will be doing some research this weekend 

I will also try to create new partition and installed new Windows (7, 8 and 8.1) to check whether this process running by default

• Edited by britishdhez Tuesday, August 19, 2014 2:28 AM

I can find it at my office PC which running with VDI, but cant test plug USB external HDD

I will be doing some research this weekend 

I will also try to create new partition and installed new Windows (7, 8 and 8.1) to check whether this process running by default

• Edited by britishdhez Tuesday, August 19, 2014 2:28 AM

Some user mode driver loads when connecting your USB drive -- did you install additional software?

You can experiment killing the process, as long as you are certain it doesn't host the driver for some other important device; if killing it renders the USB device inaccessible then it seems an "enhanced" replacement driver is running.

wudfhost.exe: "Windows User Mode Driver Framework HOST" -- provides all the resources required to running user mode drivers.

Thanks for your thoughts, Paul.

I have installed no additional software specifically tied to my external drives (I just plugged them in and they worked).

An important question, since you speculate that I may be running "an 'enhanced' replacement driver": 

Do *YOU* have external USB drives connected and working without WUDFHost running?

I ask because maybe it's just normal to see what I see.  Maybe USB drives are always hosted through the user mode driver framework.  I haven't even been able to ascertain whether anyone actually runs Windows 8.1 with an external USB drive and DOESN'T see WUDFHost.

Hi, Noel,

WUDFHost should be the simplified name of Windows User-Driver Framework Host.

Windows Driver Frameworks (WDF) is a set of libraries that you can use to develop device drivers that are interoperable with Windows. WDF is comprised of Kernel-Mode Driver Framework (KMDF) and User-Mode Driver Framework (UMDF).

You can refer to the link below for further information about this host:

Windows Driver Frameworks:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff557565(v=vs.85).aspx

Hi, Noel,

WUDFHost should be the simplified name of Windows User-Driver Framework Host.

Windows Driver Frameworks (WDF) is a set of libraries that you can use to develop device drivers that are interoperable with Windows. WDF is comprised of Kernel-Mode Driver Framework (KMDF) and User-Mode Driver Framework (UMDF).

You can refer to the link below for further information about this host:

Windows Driver Frameworks:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff557565(v=vs.85).aspx

Thank you, Roger.   I had already seen info that describes what the WDF does/is, but I guess what I was looking for is this:  Does WUDFHost run for everyone with a Western Digital MyBook, because their driver is built on the WDF?  Or is my system executing a variant driver that some don't have?

It's not a big deal; everything's working perfectly - something for which I'm thankful.  I run through many terabytes of backup data without a glitch.  At this point I just want to understand the context a little better.

I'm going to go ahead and mark your answer above as "the answer", Roger, because it is in fact a direct answer to my question.  Thank you.