Tiworker.exe Process - Is It a Virus?

Tiworker.exe is a process and executable file that has caused some concern to Windows users. However, we should get it out of the gate as early as possible in this article - in its original form, this is not a virus and is not a malicious process.

Tiworker and its parent process - Trustedinstaller.exe, are both legitimate Windows 10 components. Some users have been concerned about those processes as they might show up as displaying heavy disk access and use. This is because they are connected to the Windows 10 update service.

While Windows is doing auto-updates, those processes will fire up and will take up some amount of system resources. On older hardware with older, slower hard drives and less memory, it might appear as though the system is slowing down occasionally during the update process.

However, we should reiterate that Tiworker.exe is not a virus and is a legitimate Microsoft process.

If you check the location of your Tiworker.exe process-related local file and it is found under "C:\Windows\servicing", this means you are likely looking at the legitimate, normal Windows processes.

Sometimes, advanced malware has the capability to spoof legitimate processes or inject itself into them. In those rare cases, it might be that a malicious application is spoofing the Tiworker process.

If you see abnormally high CPU usage associated with the Tiworker.exe process or you find its local file in a strange directory, you might be dealing with a piece of malware.

However, in most cases, as previously stated, Tiworker.exe is a completely normal occurrence during Windows updates and is no cause for alarm.