Inspiron 640m: Internet Explorer hogging memory

Hi all,

Bought a brand new Inspiron 640m in September last year and have had hardly any problems. Running XP service pack 2, with 1GB RAM. I run virus checks and spyware checks regularly and have done so again since below problem first occurred.

Over the past couple of days, noticed that performance seemed to be slower than usual, even when there's only 1 or 2 applications running. Task Manager showed that Internet Explorer is hogging memory usage at about 55MB - even though it's not open and there is only 1 other application open.

It's puzzling especially because I don't use IE as default (rarely use it at all), and the problem didn't end when I tried disabling it from 'Set Program Access and Defaults' and disabling internet access using IE using my firewall program. (therefore it's not using up loads of memory because it's trying to access the internet).

Another thing: when I end the process directly from Task Manager, it disappears from the process list, but then re-appears immediately after at a lower memory usage. Over the next couple of seconds, it actually increases its memory usage and climbs higher up the list of processes until it's eventually at the top of the list of processes using memory.

Any ideas? Thanks for your help.

 

delete IE?

 

Skawtish,

Yep, one of the first things I considered! Unfortunately, I need to keep IE as it's the default browser for a piece of software I use for work (software which doesn't offer the option of choosing an alternative default browser). So can't delete it.

I'm using IE v6.0 and would really rather not have to update to v7.0.

Any other ideas?

 

Hi again,

This problem is still persisting. I've now done all my Windows updates and have updated to IE 7.0. The problem has actually gotten worse, with iexplore.exe now taking up at least 70MB of RAM in the Processes list in Task Manager. Again, I have disabled its access to the internet using my firewall program.

Done all virus checks, spyware checks - everything I can think of is up to date. Is this a Dell Inspiron problem? Any ideas how to fix this?

Thanks,

 

Hi,

Well none of you helped me here so I went to another forum to get my answers. Turned out malware was causing the problem but my anti-spyware software wasn't picking it up.

Weirdly named folders in C:\Documents and Settings\my_username\Application Data had appeared such as 'clockwork' and 'time data bolt face', containing executables by the names 'kindplan.exe' and 'name less.exe'. Could not delete the folders or the .exe files. You can solve the problem by:

- Start->Run->msconfig
- Startup tab
- Uncheck the .exe files and anything else that seems odd
- Reboot
- Go back in and delete the folders in Application data (it'll let you delete this time)

Worked perfectly and no problems since.

PS. I had an inkling kindplan.exe was a rogue application but I had no idea where it was and searching did not give a result. Turned out it was in Application Data but there's no way I would have figured out this out on my own. It did not appear as a process in Task Manager.