Many resource-hogging iexplorer.exe processes on all workstations

davegravy

7/23/23, 3:50 PM

Suddenly all our workstations are having an issue with sluggish performance. Inspecting task manager, there is a common culprit: several iexplorer.exe processes exist (~7 on average, but varies with time and machine) each with ~500MB RAM reserved. Periodically the CPU and disk usage associated with each spikes and the machine performance drags to a halt.

If I attempt to kill these processes they instantly respawn and consume high CPU and disk for a minute. I removed Windows Explorer 11 from Optional Features on one workstation and the performance issues resolved without anything obviously breaking but I'm uneasy about leaving it like this without deeper understanding.

Our MSP is being dodgy and opaque so I am now investigating this myself. Recently we rolled out MS Intune which may be related, or some app being deployed through it.

These are up-to-date win10 machines and everyone is using modern web browsers. All the searches I've done return results from 5+ years ago.

How can I determine what is spawning these processes? Is there a more efficient method than uninstalling applications systematically and monitoring task manager? What is a recommended method to diagnose this?

0 + 0

performance

internet-explorer

windows-10

joeqwerty

7/23/23, 3:59 PM

Try using procmon on one of the affected computers to see what's spawning iexplorer.exe - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Robert

7/23/23, 9:09 PM

If the parent process is long living you can even easier identify it e.g. by looking at the process tree shown by Sysinternals ProcessExplorer.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Many resource-hogging iexplorer.exe processes on all workstations

TH: กระบวนการ iexplorer.exe ที่ใช้ทรัพยากรจำนวนมากบนเวิร์กสเตชันทั้งหมด

RO: Multe procese iexplorer.exe care dețin resurse pe toate stațiile de lucru

RU: Много ресурсоемких процессов iexplorer.exe на всех рабочих станциях

VI: Nhiều tiến trình iexplorer.exe ngốn tài nguyên trên tất cả các máy trạm

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