ielowutil.exe mystery solved

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Dieselman

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Mar 26, 2011
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Here is a helpful hint I discovered myself so I thought I share it with you.

After installing IE 9 and using it for about a week I went back to Firefox 3.5.6. then eventually to FF 4.0. So I never went back to IE ever again. But for some odd reason ielowutil.exe would magically appear. I didn't think much of it at first. So one day I was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery. I opened up my trusty Process Hacker and explored everything about ielowutil.exe. The parent program of course is IE. But the fact that I never opened IE made it even more odd. So I did some research for about an hour and came up with nothing.

So I went into Process Hackers settings and enabled all the system tray features which basically tells you who started who,when and where. I sat and watch my laptop for about an hour at idle. When ielowutil.exe started it was triggered by Feeds and Web Slices. I was like .............."What?". So I went into internet options\content\feeds and web slices\settings. In there I unchecked "automatically check feeds and web slices for updates". I also unchecked everything else in there.

Presto................Problem gone. So exactly what was going on? Well it turns out that ielowutil.exe is a prefetcher for feeds and web slices. That was about 2 weeks ago and ielowutil.exe has never mysteriously appeared on its own again. Hope this helps some members and also you can learn how Process Hacker can be used as a diagnostic tool.
 
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Well as I often use IE9 on the laptop seems I didn't notice that processes if that comes there I will not bothered it.
 
jamescv7 said:
Well as I often use IE9 on the laptop seems I didn't notice that processes if that comes there I will not bothered it.
Click to expand...

Most likely cause your on XP. But you dont have to be using IE James as I already said. How did you run IE 9 on XP anyways?
 
James, if I remember correctly the Laptop runs Windows 7 and the Desktop run Windows XP?
 
As far as i know ielowutil.exe was introduced in IE8 to better handle low integrity level operations in IE. It is needed because of the IE Protected mode security feature. So the process itself is not directly related to news feeds but since IE starts to update those feeds, this process might be also started. So the problem is that IE starts because of the Automatically check for Feeds and Webslices is enabled (but I think this is not enabled by default), you obviously don't need this feature if IE is not your main browser.

An article about ielowutil.exe: link.
 
Well bogdan as soon I stopped feeds and web slices from being auto enabled it all stopped. And yes its chekced of by default cause I have checked about 20 other Windows 7 machines.

Jamescv7 main machine, then one shown is the desktop section is XP. The Windows 7 machine is his parents.
 
stormgtr said:
James, if I remember correctly the Laptop runs Windows 7 and the Desktop run Windows XP?
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Yes the laptop runs in Windows 7 starter where the IE9 runs, and my desktop is Windows XP
 
Good investigating Diesel. There isn't alot of (detailed) information online about what exactly it does.

But i don't think it's sole purpose is to check for updates to feeds and web slices.

I think it may have been required however to carry out this task.

Here is a post that relates to IE8. Should still be relevent to IE9 though.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/askie/archi...xe-have-to-do-with-internet-explorer-8-0.aspx

The short answer at the end:
So the short answer is that IELowUtil.exe is the broker process that handles operations which require processing at a Low Integrity level. Hopefully this was informative and provides a historical reference regarding this behavior change.
Click to expand...


EDIT: bogdan beat me to it :)
 
Did I ever say it was not required? No. Did I say I killed,terminated and remove IELowUtility.exe? No. I simply found out why it was auto triggering. Thats all. It is till there in the IE folder. I personally read over 100 articles and not one could tell me how to stop this from auto triggering. There are others asking why this process runs even after IE is closed out or not being used.
 
Sorry bogdan I meant check off as "enabled" by default. BTW I dont need to hear or see artciles on what ielowutil.exe is and what it does. I posted this info from MY observations and gave instrictions on how to stop this for any other person with this mystery. Your welcome. Please stop trying to explain everything about ieowutil.exe cause I read every article on it and none could explain what I or others saw. It took my over an hour to find this problem.
 
Dieselman said:
BTW I dont need to hear or see artciles on what ielowutil.exe is and what it does.
~
Please stop trying to explain everything about ieowutil.exe cause I read every article on it and none could explain what I or others saw.
Click to expand...

Others may read this thread and benefits from the links provided.
 
Ok stomgtr...............I will post every single link I read just to make members happy. If you haven't noticed this is my personal finding and how I solved it. I did not just copy and paste an article in here so members could read it. I posted well detailed instructions of how I solved this problem and how others can use Process Hacker to diagnose there computers. Thanks.

If somebody needs to know what ielowutil.exe is and what it does then that can be a separate thread.
 
Thanks alot for your post Diesel.

I just didn't agree with this
So exactly what was going on? Well it turns out that ielowutil.exe is a prefetcher for feeds and web slices.
Click to expand...

So I just thought I'd point it out.
 
Your welcome Tomo. Sure maybe ielowutil.exe does more then just what I said but the problem is gone as soon as I unchecked those things I mentioned from my laptop as well as others.
 
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