the case of the 2 iexplore.exe processes

in my previous post i was troubleshooting internet explorer and why i had two processes everytime i open the browser.  what i had forgotten is that i upgraded to internet explorer 8 and that we now use two iexplore.exe processes that runs at different integrity levels and then open pages and/or tabs in other iexplore.exe processes.  to confirm this behavior i downloaded process explorer.

 process explorer 02

notice that even though i’ve only got my home page open process explorer 01

there are two iexplore.exe processes and by adding the integrity column from view – select columns i was able to confirm this.

if you haven’t used process explorer by mark russinovich, i would suggest you take a look at it now.  you can even replace task manager with this free utility