ieplore.exe - heavy user.

[stevenrw]

I have a colleague here at work who's having problems with a program called iexplore.exe (note - NOT iEexplore.exe!)

He gets 3 running at once using a huge percentage of the cpu power and RAM, with the obvious impact on performance.

There seems to be a few conflicting opinions regarding this program.

Can somebody please give me an authoritative chapter & verse on this bit of software. Is it malware or not, should he remove it or not etc etc.
Win XP Home SP3, Norton Corporate AV incl Windows Defender etc.

Thanks in advance guys.

[Gary]

I have a colleague here at work who's having problems with a program called iexplore.exe (note - NOT iEexplore.exe!)

He gets 3 running at once using a huge percentage of the cpu power and RAM, with the obvious impact on performance.

There seems to be a few conflicting opinions regarding this program.

Can somebody please give me an authoritative chapter & verse on this bit of software. Is it malware or not, should he remove it or not etc etc.
Win XP Home SP3, Norton Corporate AV incl Windows Defender etc.

Thanks in advance guys.

iexplorer.exe is the process that runs IE Explorer you can verify its the corrrect process by doing the following


1) open Task Manager (right click on taskbar, select Task Manager)
2) Click "Processes" tab
3) Open 1 instance of Internet Explorer.
4) Notice iexplore.exe shows up once in processes list
5) Highlight iexplore.exe
6) Press "End Process" button
7) Notice Internet Explorer web browser has shut down.

A scan the free version of Malwarebytes or Superantispyware would not hurt, depending on what version of Norton they are running, as the later versions generally shut down Defender on install and ask to remove Superantisyware I believe, so what version your friend has would help.

[stevenrw]

Thanks for the prompt response Gary, I'll pass this on. So it's a kosher program. I'm bemused as to why anybody would consider it malware however...

[Gary]

Thanks for the prompt response Gary, I'll pass this on. So it's a kosher program. I'm bemused as to why anybody would consider it malware however...

There is a iexplorer which is Malware thats probably why. not it does not have the .exe on it, and no worries come back if there are anymore issues 

[Inkblot]

In Win7 at least (Not sure about XP/Vista) there is an option within task manager to view the image path which will show you the actual application that is running. If this is something like c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe then you are safe, if it's more like c:\rt5rf857f\e4r5m68sd.exe you have a problem!

Task manager - Processes tab - View - Select columns - image path name

The select columns is there on XP/Vista but not sure if the image path name is an option on earlier versions of Windows

[Gary]

SYSTEM32:IEXPLORE.EXE  (uppercase) can actually be malware, did a bit more research, I would suggest to make sure do as inkblot has said, also download the free version of Prevx (www.prevx.com) if it is, it will find it, then you can go about removing it, but I would have thought if its Norton 2009/2010 that should have nabbed it with its detection ratings tbh, but things do slip though, try the free prevx out to make sure your system has not been compromised its a in the cloud product and only a tiny executable and easily removed, but very useful.