Help with iexplorer.exe?

[stevednmc]

Not sure if this is the right place to post, but my girlfriend is having an issue with iexplorer.exe. In the task manager it shows it running the cpu at 97 percent or so, and the memory usage for the task is through the roof. I can shut it down but it comes back and the memory usuage goes up again. I tried running Kaspersky and it found no threats and ran CCleaner with no results. This is a pretty fresh install of windows 7 32 bit, about a month old and she isnt running or installing and downloading a whole lot. Any ideas?


Thanks!

 

[Mussels]

its either a virus, or a program has borked windows causing problems. i'm leaning to the latter.


just reinstall the OS.

 

[assaulter_99]

Yeah, either it was caused by something you installed lately or its a virus like stated ^. Try a system restore first, and if its still there, chances are its a virus, then nuke time!

 

[qubit]

Have you tried the obvious of rebooting the PC?

 

[stevednmc]

Well, i ran Kaspersky and it didnt find anything. Also it happens consistantly for the last several days, reboot or not.

 

[Maban]

If it is indeed iexplorer.exe and not iexplore.exe, then it is certainly a virus. Find where it's at, boot in safe mode, then delete it.

 

[qubit]

In that case, I recommend going for the nuclear option and reinstalling. You could try searching the Microsoft knowledgbase about this first, though. Make sure your data's backed up before you do this, of course.

You could try the following things:

1 Run it in safe mode. Is it ok? Run it in safe mode with networking. Still ok? Try VGA mode and see what happens

2 Run MSCONFIG and disable everything under the Services and Startup tabs and then reboot

3 Run Windows Update and install all important updates. This is a long shot though and I wouldn't expect this to fix it

Think hard: do you or the girlfriend remember any weird shit happening to it just before IE went nuts? It's possible that Windows could be infected by a drive-by virus on an infected website.

Let us know how you get on.

 

[stevednmc]

Thanks much! I will explore it more tomorrow and see what i can find. I dont use her laptop so i cant say what specifically triggered this. Most likely facebook. She loves all those flash games!

 

[Mussels]

Thanks much! I will explore it more tomorrow and see what i can find. I dont use her laptop so i cant say what specifically triggered this. Most likely facebook. She loves all those flash games!

there are definitely viruses available on facebook, most of them badly coded and dont really do anything. since its internet explorer that died, its quite possible one of them tried to do something, failed, and just killed IE.

(its also possible a screwed up install of flash or java or another plugin from a randomly installed program is whats broken it, but it didnt kick in until a reboot so she didnt associate her actions with the problem)

 

[stevednmc]

yeah, makes sense. She can still get online and all that, but the process is eating a ton of resources...slowing it down big time.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

It could be a script running in an infinite loop too.

 

[stevednmc]

Like a Java script or something like that? How might I check for that?

 

[Steve-007UK]

You could try scanning with MalwareBytes, I have found the program very usefull at times especialy when my AV scanner dosen't pick anything up.

 

[stevednmc]

I have in fact scanned with malwarebytes. Also CCleaner, and Kaspersky antivirus. Whatever it is it is wiley!

 

[95Viper]

If you can access the suspicious files, then, run them through Virustotal to see if the multiple scan engines there pick up anything.

Also, try Superantispyware.
If, the virus/trojan interferes with the download or running try the portable version.
Quote from the site:

Please note : The scanner is saved under a random filename so that malware infections won't block the scanner.

As a last resort, before a re-install you could try ComboFix.