Hello everyone.

I'm using IE8 under Vista, and I've started to notice that after a while of surfing I get 5 or 6 "iexplore.ex" entries in the Task Manager. I have my browser set up for Tabs but rarely, if ever have more than the 1 Tab open at any one time. As the copies of "iexplore.exe" multiplies, IE8 becomes unresponsive and I shut it down. The entries remain in TM and when I try to end those processes, access is denied. I end up having to reboot to get rid of them.

Anyone know what's going on?

The only other browser related programs running are: Admuncher and ZoneAlarm Firewall.

Thanks.

Each time you open a new tab or window, generally speaking (not always, but usually) you will get a new iexplore.exe process. This is expected behavior - however, the processes are supposed to go away after approximately 60 seconds after a tab or window is closed, so some add-in or BHO is probably holding them open.

Can you reproduce the problem if you start IE8 with the -extoff switch from the command line (or the start bar): iexplore.exe -extoff ?

This is described here:

Closing an IE 8 TAB does not immediately close the spawned iexplore.exe process

How to determine which IE tabs goes to which Iexplore.exe process when using Internet Explorer 8

Opening a New Tab may launch a New Process with Internet Explorer 8.0

Clicking on the blue “e” in taskbar does not launch a new process in IE8

Do you use "Spybot Search & Destroy" or something like its "Immunizise"?

Thanks for the replies to my question. I seem to have stumbled on the answer myself. I had installed the latest version of Java, and by trial and error I discovered that if I disabled the Java startup (msconfig.exe), the problem went away, and has not returned. Hope this helps someone else.

Yeah, actually it's quite a well-known issue now that both Spybot and Java can cause the problem, and that running regsvr32 actxprxy.dll seems to fix it as well if you install IE8 onto a machine with either of those two apps already installed.

I am still not sure why, but it seems at least those two apps seem to interfere with the proper installation of IE8, and specifically that .dll, causing the very slow performance issues people are seeing.

Each time you open a new tab or window, generally speaking (not always, but usually) you will get a new iexplore.exe process. This is expected behavior - however, the processes are supposed to go away after approximately 60 seconds after a tab or window is closed, so some add-in or BHO is probably holding them open.

Can you reproduce the problem if you start IE8 with the -extoff switch from the command line (or the start bar): iexplore.exe -extoff ?

This is described here:

Closing an IE 8 TAB does not immediately close the spawned iexplore.exe process

How to determine which IE tabs goes to which Iexplore.exe process when using Internet Explorer 8

Opening a New Tab may launch a New Process with Internet Explorer 8.0

Clicking on the blue “e” in taskbar does not launch a new process in IE8

Thanks for the links! I found the "TabshutdownDelay" to be very useful. Yet another tweak to add to my long list of tweaks...