IE is using 99% resources

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Guest

This just started happening. I hear my hard drives race and when i go over
to my computer and look at "Task MGR" it reveals that Internet Explorer is
using 99% of my resources and I don't even have it open or anything for that
matter. A few times, while the computer was idle, the Windows message comes
up saying it was gonna increase my virtual memory because it was running low.
I now let Windows handle the virtual memory size but this did not help. I
did a registry clean up, a virus scan, defrag, scandisk, spyware scan, worm
scan, and even did a system restore.
Any suggestions?
 
Angie said:
This just started happening. I hear my hard drives race and when i go over
to my computer and look at "Task MGR" it reveals that Internet Explorer is
using 99% of my resources and I don't even have it open or anything for that
matter. A few times, while the computer was idle, the Windows message comes
up saying it was gonna increase my virtual memory because it was running low.
I now let Windows handle the virtual memory size but this did not help. I
did a registry clean up, a virus scan, defrag, scandisk, spyware scan, worm
scan, and even did a system restore.
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Hi Angie,
This a sign of a shortage of Memory on your computer and hungry Apps is
fighting for the memory and IE is not releasing it.
How much RAM you have on your machine? if 128, you need at least 512 MB so
add Another RAM stick to your computer or a PC technician do that for you.
How much Free Disk Space you have on your Machine.
Try to do Memory test on your computer.
Set the IE cache size in between 50-80 MB and clear your caches and delete
all offline files and cookies.
What AV/Anti-spyware you are using? and are they up2date definitions.
Please write back with your System specs (i.e OS Ver, IE ver, Space on HDD,
RAM size).
hope this helps
Regards
nass
 
Hey Nass,
Thanks for your responce. I have an Emachines D340 Computer. It has 2.93
GHZ Intel Celeron processor. I have 1024 mb Ram. 80 GB hard drive with 37GB
free. Windows XP Home SP2 and IE SP2 6.0.2900.2180xpsp_sp2
I have Avast Anti Virus which updates almost daily. My IE cashe is set at
50mb. I'll set it to 80mb. This just started and almost all my applications
are running at 100% now. But what is odd about IE is that I don't even have
it open and all of a sudden I hear my computer fans going and I see in Task
Mgr that it is IExplorer.exe using up 100% resources. I'm thinking I have
been hijacked or something.
Anyhow thanks for your help,
Angie
 
Angie said:
Hey Nass,
Thanks for your responce. I have an Emachines D340 Computer. It has 2.93
GHZ Intel Celeron processor. I have 1024 mb Ram. 80 GB hard drive with 37GB
free. Windows XP Home SP2 and IE SP2 6.0.2900.2180xpsp_sp2
I have Avast Anti Virus which updates almost daily. My IE cashe is set at
50mb. I'll set it to 80mb. This just started and almost all my applications
are running at 100% now. But what is odd about IE is that I don't even have
it open and all of a sudden I hear my computer fans going and I see in Task
Mgr that it is IExplorer.exe using up 100% resources. I'm thinking I have
been hijacked or something.
Anyhow thanks for your help,
Angie
Click to expand...

Hi Angie,
This a sign for infection from Malware/Viruses, please do a scan online from
here:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
http://www.pandasoftware.com
http://www.sophos.com
For Anti-Adware go here:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ for SE lavasoft for personal use
http://www.safer-networking.org/ for S&D spybot
Please RUN the ActiveX for these online Scan for viruses if you don't have
Java installed already and try the scan in both mode Safe Mode/Normal Mode.
Hope this helps
Best of luck
nass
 
Thanks again Nass. I ran the anti virus scan at Panda and Houscall. Thanks
for those addresses. I'll be using them from time to time now. They both
reported I had no malaware or viruses. I already have spybot and adware and
they both report I am doing fine. Mystery...
Anyhow, thanks for your time.
Angie
 
Hi Angie,
How your Coonection is set up, is it to dail Automatically or to never Dail
up.
Try to set that in the Connection Tab on the IE Properties, you will see
three Dail up Options
1-Never Dail up select this Radio Button
2-Dail up whenever a Netork connection is not present
3-Always dail my default connection

I can not understand why all your Applications are runing 100% usage of the
CPU/Memory, do you have a lot f Apps need to Update from the Internet?
Try to uncheck the unnecessary Applications on start up (in a selective
Mode)and see if that will ease up or eliminate this behavior on your system.
To do that logon as Admin and Type in the RUN command: msconfig
Click OK
On Start Up Tab Uncheck the Apps/Programs which is extra and not needed for
the system start up procedure/process.
Close and Reboot and see if that helps.
Did you installed a new Applications/Hardwares recently on your system.
if no joy, try to Backup your Data on a removable CD/DVD and Clean install
is your Option, but be sure you have the XP CD software first.
Hope this helps
Regards
nass
 
I know. I can't understand either. I have DSL and my connection set up is
to "never dial". I only have 5 startup programs which have always been
there with no problem. I did install a screensaver I downloaded from Windows
Marketplace site recently but I uninstalled it and then removed it from the
registry too. With all the scans I did, you'd think something would have
shown up. I even did a scannow to have windows replace any protected files
that may have been overwritten. Boy, this one has me scratching my head.
Anyhow, thanks for all the time you spent with me.
All the best,
Angie
 
This may be caused by spyware/malware that's gotten installed on
your system. You've done some scanning, I see, but there's bad stuff out
there that you may have missed and need to dig deeper. Here's my usual
reply in these cases, and I realize you've already done some of these
things.....

Use Ad-Aware, Windows Defender and/or Spybot Search & Destroy to remove it.

Windows Defender (beta)
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Ad-Aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
Good sites on how to install and use Spybot -
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/tutorial/index.html
http://tomcoyote.com/SPYBOT/index1.php

Also download a winsock repair tool, to have just in case cleaning up
anything found breaks it -

Winsock repair tools:
LSPFix- all versions of Windows http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.zip
Winsock2 Fix- Win98, ME
http://www.bu.edu/pcsc/internetaccess/winsock2fix.html
LavaSoft- all versions of Windows-
http://digital-solutions.co.uk/lavasoft/whndnfix.zip

More information here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/tshoot.html
http://spywarewarrior.com/sww-help.htm

If no joy, in IE go to Tools...Internet Options...Advanced tab, Browsing
section, uncheck "Enable third-party browser extensions", click Apply, click
Okay, reboot. If that solves your problem, then more troubleshooting is
needed to find out exactly which program, or Browser Helper Object (BHO) is
causing this problem. You don't want to leave it at that, as some BHOs are
useful or necessary - like Adobe Acrobat for reading .pdf files or an
essential component of Norton AV. Get BHODemon -
http://www.definitivesolutions.com/bhodemon.htm - read all about BHOs.
Disable all items, and then gradually replace one or two at a time to narrow
down the culprit.

Or if you have IE 6 SP-2 you can do this within the browser:
How to manage Internet Explorer add-ons in Windows XP Service Pack 2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883256

If all the above fails, then the problem could be something new that the
spyware cleaners above don't have in their databases yet. In that case....
HijackThis direct download:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/hijackthis.zip
Tutorial on how to use HijackThis:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/htlogtutorial.html
Then post it's output log to the forum here for analysis and feedback by the
parasite experts:
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/
Or the other HijackThis Logs forums listed here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/forums.html

Or try this program to get some of the most nasty malware:
CWShredder direct download:
http://aumha.org/downloads/cwshredder.zip

An alternate resource for all of this and more:
http://www.aumha.org/secure.htm
 
I have this too. Seems to start after being on line for a while (I have
dial-up) could have begun after downloading a Windows security update? I’m
guessing here, but NOT spyware.
 
Another source of this problem that I've seen is when one goes to a site and
plays Java-based games and they're poorly coded so that they don't totally
quit and keep hogging memory/resources even when closed. The only recourse
there is to close all IE windows and restart IE.
 
Thank you for all that info. Very helpful. I downloaded a couple of the
programs you menitoned and will utilize them. I think I may have found the
problem. Still checking though. It may be one of the email servers I use.
It happened before where I got a BHO from one of their advertisers which
caused me all sorts of trouble till I found it and removed it. Well lately
their pop ups have been getting through. And I have 3 pop up blockers! So
I just stopped going over to their page and using their service the past
three days and the computer has been working fine again. I also ran a few of
the utilities (anti virus scan, disk defrag and audio editing) that were
going into 100% utilization and they all worked normally using nominal
resources. And IExplorer.exe has not gone into 100% since then also. I will
run the tools you suggested that I downloaded just to be on the safe side. I
also changed the IE setting and unchecked the third party box.
Thank you again for all your help.
Angie
 
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