Suspicious: iexplore.exe running, but no browser open!

Forgive me if I violated any protocol by posting this same querry under "spyware."

I just noticed that on my son's win2K box, ZeroPopup (anti popup s/w) is running when no browser is open! Normally ZeroPopup only loads when IE is running!! I looked in running processes and saw one instance of iexplore, even though IE was not open (pc just booted up). After killing the process, ZeroPopup closed.

I run ZeroPopup on my other pcs as well, and never saw this behavior (though I use SlimBrowser, not IE)

I should point out that I keep things clean, run AdAware, SpyBot, CWShredder, etc., and everything is clean and normal, and the pc isn't acting up, but I found this very suspicious!!!

Thanks for any feedback,
Scott

 

firstly find the path of iexplore.exe it should be in
C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE (NOTE CAPITALS) not lower case there is another instance of iexplore.exe (lower case) but this in C:\WINNT\system32.dll cache and you won't find this unless you search for it
so check the path of if it if it's not in any of these folders you need to follow these procedures

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=27385

 

This happens to me all the time. I, also, use IE with ZeroPopup (on Windows 98SE). Sometimes, ZeroPopup loads, then IE starts to load, but gets hung, resulting in no browser window opening. Waiting several seconds will, occasionally, solve the problem. Usually, when this happens, I just close iexplore.exe and restart it and it loads, without any problems. I hadn't really considered that ZeroPopup might be causing this behavior, but it's possible, I guess. You might can try uninstalling ZeroPopup and see if that helps. If it does, you can always use another pop-up blocker (although, the ones I've tried haven't been as reliable as ZeroPopup).

 

You could also install SlimBrowser for him, since that works for you.