2 IEs in Task Manager

[kk2264]

I am working on a system that has XP Media Center Edition on it. (I personally hate media center edition because of the overhead it creates but that is besides the point).

Anyhow it is a P4 3GHz with 512MB ram and even after turning off as much of the media center additional services it still hovers around 450MB +/- just starting up. It has avast! anti-virus, Kodak smartstart, and HP printing services running in the system tray at boot but these items do not waste that much resources.

I did however notice something odd in task manager, there are 2 instances of iexplore.exe running and 1 uses anywhere from 1-2MB while the other tops out around 60MB +/-. I can find no reason for these to be running and after trying to kill the processes they just reappear. I have talked them into not using IE for anything and to use firefox instead and it is set as the default browser. But every once in a while an IE popup window will display with different websites and ads.

I know it might be virus or spyware related but avast! scanned on boot and found some items and moved them to the chest and I ran superantispyware andit scanned clean, I ran these numerous times and they scan clean.

And Yes I turned off system restore before doing anything so it is not related to a restore point anywhere.

If anyone has any information on what might be causing this I would greatly appreciate it, If you have any utilities that I might need be include them in your reply as well. Free utilities are always preferred but if I must purchase something I will.

Thank you for reading this long drawn out post

 

[kimsland]

Kodak smartstart, and HP printing services running in the system tray at boot but these items do not waste that much resources.

Actually these two startups normally do create lots of wasted resource
As a test I'd say turn them off temporarily. Here is an excellent tool for doing that: Startup Control Panel (you just untick the entry, then restart)

I'd like to hear feedback on this once done. ie this may take 5 to 10 mins to complete
But realistically you need to go through this thread in full:
UPDATED 8-step Viruses/Spyware/Malware Preliminary Removal Instructions

 

[kk2264]

Thank you kimsland, I know the HP and Kodak tray icons/services use and waste space, I was just stating they do not use that much compared to the IE resources I listed. I will try turning these off though when my customer gives me their PC back to install memory and continue tweaking. I D/L the utilities you mentioned that I did not already try and will keep you apprised of what I find out once I work on the system again.

Thank you for your response and for doing so very quickly