What can cause IE 7 to suck from 75-90% CPU when I type in another URL? Most of the time I am just loading HTML content, not anything fancy (I would also think it would be I/O bound rather than CPU). The CPU utilization can hit 100% for a minute while this is happening. I don’t see any other processes in Task Manager that look suspicious.
Can plug-ins do this even if they’re not invoked by a web site?
Are there viruses that can glom onto IE and make it look like it’s using a lot of CPU when it’s really the virus doing it? I don’t have any other sign of infection and I have Symantec AV but I think the definitions are out of date.
XP Home.
Hi. Is this definitely only whilst typing in new URLs? Are you typing them into the address bar or anywhere else?
IE7 (at least for me) seems super happy to hog my cores even if I just have static web pages displayed.
If this is only happening when you are typing, I’d suspect some kind of real-time lookup feature, either through a legit plugin such as a pre-fetcher or something more nefarious.
tim
Please allow me to be more precise–it is not while *typing *the URL, it is after I hit ENTER and the page loads. Just had it happen when I was going to read an article in the New York Times, although it looks like that page drags a lot of baggage with it, banner ads, and probably click trackers. Still, that would seem I/O intensive and not CPU intensive.
Have you run the usual malware scanners – Spybot, etc.? Also your antivirus software will occupy more of your CPU time than anything else. Turn it off and see what happens.