Multiple .exe starting in Task Manager

[kennon]

Hey all,

It's been a while since I've needed guidance from you guys, but I would greatly appreciate any help now.

I have a Dell Xps 400 Media Center addition running Windows XP. For a while now, "IEXPLORE.exe" would start up in my task manager in addition to "iexplore.exe whenever I started Internet Explorer. After closing out of IE, "iexplore.exe" leaves but "IEXPLORE.EXE" stays. A very similar situation occurs when I play any sort of video game. These clones drastically slow the computer down until I manually delete them via Task Manager.

Has anyone had this similar situation and if so have you been able to prevent these clones ".exe"s from appearing? Again, I'd really appreciate any advice.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Steve R Jones]

Does the pc get rebooted/shut down on a regular basis or is it on 24/7?

[BipolarBill]

Use Winpatrol to actually trace the bugger:

BillP Studios: WinPatrol 2008

Just use the "Info" button to find the path.

If the program is not located in Program Files/Internet Explorer, it's fake and probably spyware. Another trick is to slightly misspell an item to fool the user.

[kennon]

First of all, thanks for the responses. Sorry I haven't been able to get back sooner.

BipolarBill: I used Winpatrol, but the problem is that the extra '.exe's arent showing up in the list, so I have no way to trace them as of now.

Steve R Jones: The pc gets shut down about once every day or so. Most of the rest of the time it is in hibernation.

Any more advice would be great and thanks again.