IEXPLORE.EXE causing 99% cpu usage

[tk421]

Using NT wkstn 4.0 with sp6 and IE5.5. Sometime in the last day or two the user noticed his system starting to run very slow and freeze alot. right away i noticed in the task manager that iexplore.exe was using 99% of his cpu. tried rebooting but still whenever Internet Explorer is launched, cpu usage shoots up to 99%.

Anyone come across this before?

[confus-ed]

Run Internet explorer repair and clear the browser cache, see if that helps.

[PitaBred]

Just kill IE from the task manager (under services, not programs) and that ought to fix it... at least, it did for me a day or so ago when I had that problem.

[ScottieM3]

There could also be another app using the explorer GUI that is crashing it... Alot of programs grab explorer's GUI via Win32API

[tk421]

it's pretty obvious that it is IE, because the system is fine until the very moment it is run, and that's when iexplore.exe sucks up 99% of the cpu.

there are other problems with the system. someone installed office xp a couple weeks ago, and that may be fouling up the system. Outlook express freezes the whole system everytime you try to open an email in it. I may be in for a reinstall here.

[ScottieM3]

[quote]Originally posted by tk421:
<strong>it's pretty obvious that it is IE, because the system is fine until the very moment it is run, and that's when iexplore.exe sucks up 99% of the cpu.

there are other problems with the system. someone installed office xp a couple weeks ago, and that may be fouling up the system. Outlook express freezes the whole system everytime you try to open an email in it. I may be in for a reinstall here.</strong><hr></blockquote>

upgrade to IE6 see if it fixes it..

[tk421]

i did. it didn't.

[ScottieM3]

theres no helper apps... like "gator" or "Comet Cursor" on the system is there...

Besides that I don't know, really sounds like a third party app is grabbing onto your Explorer object and crashing it..

sorry if your still stuck

[tk421]

i ended up just installing netscape, until i can figure out what's causing it. thanks for the suggestions.

[GarryD]

Most likely, the problem is that the Index.dat file is corrupted, or that you manually deleted files from the Temporary Internet Files that the Index.dat file pointed to. IE doesn't like that!

What you need to do is delete the Index.dat file, which is a hidden index file that IE creates to keep track of it's temporary files. For WinNT & Win2000 you need to do this upon boot-up otherwise the file is in use. For Win9x you can boot up with the command prompt and delete it.

First, determine where the Index.dat file is. This could be %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5 (as shown below) but may be different on your setup.

Next, create a batch file and save it on your system as c:\IndexFix.bat
The contents of the file should read:

C:
CD "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5"
attrib index.dat -s -h
del index.dat
pause

Next, you need to have WinNT call this batch file upon bootup. You MUST place it under the RunOnce key in the registry, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. If you are not comfortable using regedit, you can create a file called IndexFix.reg with the following contents and then double-click on it:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\RunOnce]
"DeleteIndexFile"="C:\\IndexFix.bat"

Note that the double back-slashes after C: are intentional. You must keep it exactly as above. After you double-click on IndexFix.reg from within windows explorer you need to reply "Yes" to add the contents to the registry.

Finally, you'll need to re-boot, and the index.dat file will be deleted when IndexFix.bat gets executed. I left a "pause" command at the bottom of the batch file so that you can view the execution of the batch file.

Finally, IE should work, and it will re-create an Index.dat file from scratch. I would recommend that you go into the IE settings and click on the "Empty Internet Temporary Files folder when browser is closed" option under the Advanced tab (category Security).

Good luck.

-GD