Why multiple copies of iexplore.exe?

[OfficeAnimal]

I had Task Manager (XP) up when I started Internet Explorer 8. I noticed two copies of the exe file appeared; one of them with stable memory usage of 14K-odd and the other with a varying usage of 100+K. When I opened an new window to come to Tek-Tips I got a third copy with a usage of around 70K.

Can someone tell me what is going on?

Thanks

"Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster is a maniac?."
George Carlin

 

[webrabbit]

Many web sits will open a new instance of IE when you click on a link. You can also open a new copy any time you double-click on the shortcut.

 

[smah]

This is normal behavior. It's a part of IE8's automatic crash recovery. The best explation is this reliability post on the IE Blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2008/07/28/ie8-and-reliability.aspx

 

[OfficeAnimal]

Thanks folks. I was just wondering if something strange was going on because I seemed to have an extra copy of IE running.

"Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster is a maniac?."
George Carlin