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[konamouse]

IEXPLORE is memory hog - what can I do?

[zakorath]

sorry if i'm too late, and you've already sorted it, but have you tried getting Mozilla Firefox to replace your IE

[konamouse]

[thebruce]

Kona - I'm guessing you're running Vista right? I think it's a problem with the way MS decided to handle memory - the arguable more efficient way of maintain use rather than keeping as much free (in theory, and ideally, it is more efficient use to make things faster, as I've read, but there are some hiccups with the way MS has implemented the idea).

Personally, it's IE and Eudora (email app) that keep growing in memory use until effectively everything stops working. My best answer (without researching into the problem at great, great depth) is get into the habit of checking your memory usage every so often. I get nervous after I've had IE open all day browsing (I've got 2GB ram as well). Eudora only starts with about 25-30MB, and IE sometimes less, but the OS keeps things in memory (browsing's a bitch since it's like every page, even the embedded apps like flash are retained). Eudora can grow up past 200MB, and I've had IE at close to 1GB once. If I have to restart IE, I usually grab the current URLs I have open, paste them into notepad, close down IE entirely (kill the remaining process if necessary) then reload the websites. Same with Eudora. Other apps I run don't seem to have this problem.

It's a pain, but it's about my only beef with Vista, which otherwise I actually do like.

/me waits impatiently for Vista SP 2

[konamouse]

Nope, Windows XP (for the past 2 years on the desktop computer).
When the RAM appears full and nothing else wants to work, I do shut down IE (close the window) and the reopen it. I empty out the Temp Files as well. Nothing is improving the Page Use stat.

I'm wondering if it's possible to uninstall then reinstall IE but if I uninstall it, how to I find it to reinstall again?

When I get home I'll take some screen caps of the TM window.

[ScarpeGrosse]

IE is downloadable from the MS website - If you go that route, I'd download it before uninstalling the current copy you have (but you're smart enough to know that already. I just wanted to ensure everyone knew I was smart too )

Do you have any toolbars or extensions installed on your home IE that might be sucking up memory?

[konamouse]

Both the google and yahoo toolbars are installed.

DL the latest IE means going to version 7. Damn. Trying to avoid that.3
So, DL IE 7.x, then it will probably just install itself over the current version? Or will there be a version to uninstall?
Why is there IEXPLORE.exe AND explore.exe in the process list?

I'll be home in about 2 hours. Thank you everyone for your help so far.

Edit: We took off google & yahoo toolbars. Dropped usage significantly. Reinstalled Yahoo toolbar, not much increase (so far). So maybe it was the Google????
Current IEXPLORE is using 58,000K - last night it was up to 143,000K (not sure why so high).

[Rekidk]

I have the same issue, but I'm running Windows XP. Eventually, I can't right-click or open new windows without restarting IE.

[SirQuady]

[konamouse]

I'm pretty sure this was the Java running on the Blackboard Learning website.

Thanks for all the help I've gotten so far.

[Rogi Ocnorb]

If it continues to be an issue, I'd recommend running HijackThis and posting the results log, here for some of the gurus to examine.

Warning: If you've got anything you're ashamed of running on the machine, it'll show up.

[konamouse]

Removing the Google toolbar is saving me a lot of memory.
The biggest hog happened when I was opening student assignments and saving them as word files. I'll have to do that again at the end of March - we'll see how that flies.

[Euchre]

IE7 is a HUGE improvement over previous IE versions, in that it's far more secure and a far better UI. There's also a couple of other nice things about it, like the ability to turn off browser helper objects and other extensions (BHOs). If you run it in 'safe mode' without any of those loaded and see a HUGE drop in memory footprint, you know where the problems are. I don't recommend using IE even with the advent of IE7, but for when you must use it I also suggest you get IE7Pro. This is an extension that blocks ads and allows other customizations of the browser. It's free and is only as 'snoopy' as the Google Toolbar - and you can actually turn off it's snoopiness if you read the options carefully.
Another thing you should do to restrict possible hijacks from gaining a toehold on your system is firing up Group Policy Editor (Start>Run gpedit.msc on XP Pro, not sure what Vista builds have it natively and don't). In the tree you see, there's 2 main sections and each has Administrative Templates as a subtree. Under that, follow the path Windows Components>Internet Explorer to find a wealth of system policies to restrict changes to IE once you've got it locked into an appropriately clean and configured state. If you are running XP Home, there is a way to get Group Policy Editor, but I'll let you Google up that info for yourself (it's not that hard to find and do).

Additionally, I saw that you mentioned running 2 windows of IE or more. Embrace the tabs, they are your friends.

Finally, explorer.exe is your Windows shell - it is what creates the core of your environment like your taskbar, file browser windows (Windows Explorer, My Computer), and many other features and dialogs. The file iexplore.exe is the core of Internet Explorer. Beware of processes named iexplorer.exe - that's just bad news.

[SirQuady]

With all this talk of Windows shells i'm having a flashback to Windows 3.1 and Program Manager.



Glad to hear things are going better Kona.

And as i side note, i'm still trying to decide if Blackboard is evil or just slightly misguided good...