My computer (running win 2000) currently is in very good running order. However, sometimes I find in the Windows Task Manager that I have about 4 IEXPLORE.EXE files running at the same time, even when only one browser window is open. This is true about rundll32.exe files and some others such as the adobe acrobat exe file, which was still there after I closed the browser with it in it a long time ago.
These things take up a lot of memory for not currently running on my comp. What’s the deal and is there any settings I can use to automatically close these processes?
Some other common duplicates are svchost.exe & ccApp.exe. What are these?
Regarding internet explorer, it does something called resource pooling. Instead of running every window as a seperate program, they’re all run as threads in a single process, sharing critical memory space.
However, you can run multiple processes of internet explorer at once (and all can have several sub-threads). If you’re looking at a web page and click a link and say open in new window, or go to file->new->window, it will create a new window in that process.
However, if you click the IE launch icon, it will launch an entirely new process with it’s own new resource allocation. It will also be listed as a seperate iexplore.exe process.
The problem with resource pooling is if that one segment crashes, it usually takes the rest of them with it. If you’re running 2 IE processes, a window might crash in one, and IE will kill half your windows, but the other half, the half on the other process, will survive.
Regarding rundll32.exe, I’m not sure precisely what it does, but it has something to do with executing the code in software libraries stored in dll files. If you’re using more than one library at a time, it seems reasonable that you would have more than one instance of this running.
With other stuff like svchost.exe, there are various reasons why there’d be more than one process running. Anyway, that’s all normal.
By way of explanation of the other files: RunDLL32 is a command-line utility that calls named entrypoints in DLL libraries. The system uses it to launch stuff like control panel applets. It’s a bit annoying since you never get much idea what it’s up to from looking at the task manager.
ccApp.exe is the Symantec Common Client. Probably part of your virus scanner or firewall software.
svchost.exe is a bit like RunDLL32, only for services. Lots of bits of Win2k use it. Have a look at ControlPanel/AdministrativeTools/Services to see which services are running.
Generally IE behaves as SenorBeef described. There shouldn’t be instances of the process unless there’re visible windows. I have observed that sometimes IE will crash and (like a lot of other software - I’m looking at you, Netscape) leave a dead process hanging around. Acrobat has had a tendency to do this in the past - I think the BHO in one of their releases was a bit buggy.
Regarding the single IE window open/multiple IEXPLORE.EXEs: I have also seen what I call “master” pop-ups (pop-ups that do nothing but spawn other pop-ups) create 5-6 pop-ups, but even though you’ve closed them (and closed all the 200+ other windows that THOSE windows opened up ), I’ll see several IEXPLORE processes still running - presumably because while I was turbo-firing the ALT+F4 keys, pop-ups were incompletely spawned, left in kind of a “limbo” state and not shut down properly.
Happens on Win98 as well. Actually, I haven’t seen it at all on 2K or XP.
I most often saw this happen with winword.exe - I’d lose my editing window, but the process would still be there, and the file I lost would come up as read-only in a new process until I killed the old one through the task manager!
My thought on the subject (and I am NOT an MFC/win programming expert!) is that the process “engine” may somehow fail to perceive the “death” of the window object being used to interact with the user, thus the process may stay alive indefinitely, “waiting” for user input that can, of course, never come now.
), I’ll see several IEXPLORE processes still running - presumably because while I was turbo-firing the ALT+F4 keys, pop-ups were incompletely spawned, left in kind of a “limbo” state and not shut down properly.