iexplore.exe burns cycles

[ChrisGreaves]

Question: Why would iexplore consume any CPU cycles after the system has been sitting quietly for five minutes?

I was “fixing” my neighbor’s old clunker last night (it is older, smaller ram etc than my Big Beige Box) and noticed via Task Manager that her iexplore was consuming 16% of the CPU cycles.

I thought that strange since we were just staring at the screen, and had been doing so for four minutes while we discussed her options (buy a Netbook, buy a Laptop etc.)

Nothing else was running, just Task manager and iexplore; no one is doing anything, no YouTube videos running.
Just loaded iexplore and went to the Rogers Speed test page.
We weren’t running a speed test either.

One sixth the CPU cycles. (5/6 were used by the System Idle process)

This afternoon I fired up iexplore on my laptop; it sits there staring at me and consuming 2% of the CPU.

In neither case had a reboot been done. In my case I was chatting on the phone, so no user input activity at my end.

(signed) “Curious” of Toronto.

iexplore.JPG

[HansV]

Life's too short to worry about those things. Get an Intel Core i7 X 995 processor and IE will be at 0% most of the time...

[ChrisGreaves]

Life's too short to worry about those things. Get an Intel Core i7 X 995 processor and IE will be at 0% most of the time...

I can't tell my sweet neighbour to buy an Intel Core i7 X 995 processor; she's not that kind of girl.
I told her to stop using ie and switch to Firefox.
And you're right, I'm not too worried about it; just curious as to what ie might be up to when no one has asked it to do anything.

Me, I've been too busy fighting Rogers cable about getting only 5 kbps d/l when I'm paying for 3 Mbps. (That's right, 5 kbps!)

[HansV]

They sold you an ordinary telephone cable?

[ChrisGreaves]

They sold you an ordinary telephone cable?

Nope.
Wrong again.
I think that 5kbps was less than I got during the last 5 years of my dial-up connection.
Basically they've been taking my money and not providing what they promised.
Where I come from we call that theft.

[JoeP]

What version of IE?
What OS & service pack?
What site/page was being accessed? Have you tried looking at the source for the page?
What IE addins are running?

If you have a page with any scripts running that can be one thing to cause the usage.

Joe

[ChrisGreaves]

Tough questions to ask on Patti's side (since I'm no longer sitting at her computer), none the less, thanks for asking, Joe.

What version of IE?

I guess she has ie6; it looked similar to mine which is 6.0.2900.5512.xpsp_sp3_gdr.100427-1636

What OS & service pack?

She has Win XP/auto updates=ON, so I'd guess at SP3. I am at SP3.

What site/page was being accessed?

The page is the nefarious Rogers Cable speed test page http://www.rogers.com/web/Rogers.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=support_internetServices_speedCheck.

What IE addins are running?

On Patti's side my guess is NO addins. She's a simple user and unless something defaults to checkedON she wouldn't install it.
On my side, nothing. I don't use iexplore (except to prove to Rogers that the browser makes no difference when line speeds drop to one percent of their promised rate)

Have you tried looking at the source for the page?

I have not. I'd possibly find java script or a reference to a server-side device.
My main reason for posting was not to drag you (or anyone) into page analysis, but rather I couldn't come up with an explanation of why a browser should be using any CPU cycles when nothing was being asked of it.

[JoeP]

It could just be the version of IE. IE6 is so old I don't have any systems left that have it installed. On the systems I can check they are all running IE8 or IE9 beta. There is a little CPU usage when I load that Rogers page. It uses Java so I suspect it is running something on the client side.

As far as addins go, Patti is probably running more addins than you might think. Java & Flash are two that come to mind. All she needed to do is click OK when a site originally asked to load Flash and she'll have it forever unless she specifically uninstalls it. There are many other addins that are similar in behavior.

Joe

[ChrisGreaves]

It uses Java so I suspect it is running something on the client side.

Thanks Joe.
That was my suspicion.
I guess the same code runs regardless of the CPU, so on Patty's slower CPU, the fixed amount of program execution consumes a higher proportion of the CPU.

On reflection I agree with you about the AddIns.
Users are told by people like me "Go with the defaults if you don't know what you're doing", so it shouldn't surprise me if she has inadvertently loaded every auxiliary toolbar and click-me known to man.