Why is IE running in the background

I see two to four IE processes running in the background. There is no window associated with any of them. I can kill them, but they'll come back.

Note: I don't use IE. I use Firefox. IE just sits there, installed but unused ... until now that is.

I noticed that when I click an http link in Excel two IE processes start immediately. This did not happen before. Not ever.

So I disabled IE by renaming iexplore.exe to iexplore.exe.not (in both the Program Files\Internet Explorer and Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer folders). Now IE doesn't run (obviously). But major functionality in Excel is gone. Things like typing text into a cell!

So I had to put back iexplore.exe. Excel works normally again.

What the heck is up with this nonsense?

For several versions of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office there has been 'intermingling' with Windows, just kinda "goes with the territory". I've not found a comprehensive explanation of it [but haven't taken much time to search hard].

I also see a lot of temporary intenet files and cookies belonging to IE11 on our system. It started right after the 11/12/14 Patch Tuesday updates. I can go in as Admin. and delete all of these for the user, reboot the system and with nothing launched, the Temorary Internet Files and cookies for IE will just start mounting. in 30 minutes with the computer just sitting, there will hundreds of files and dozens of cookies created. Along with this there will be 10 to 20 SVCHOST LOCAL SERVICE processes running. I still haven't figured out why the huge increase, but I just ran msert.exe for a full scan and it found "win32 trojan downloader". This was one the other AV scans I've run missed. I know IE is an integral part of Win7 operation, even if you don't use IE as your browser. Look for a service called browser or computer browser with task manager. You'll see if running all the time. If you admin authority, you can stop it, but within a minute or two, it will start running without you doing anything. It's part of Windows, but I don't understand why it's running like a web crawler, as it is hitting htmls that we don't visit.

Thrash Zone: I'm running Office 2007.
jamis: Thanks for the MSERT tip. I'm running that now.

I just ran msert ... and no viruses were found.

Judging by what others have said here (and elsewhere), this seems to be related to the Nov 11 patch spree. I didn't install the patches until Nov 22, and that's when the fun started.

So it's not clear what to do, if anything.

I'm thinking this might be an MS Office behavior.

Do you run any Office product (Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint, Word, Access)?

I get an IE spawned whenever I click an http link in Excel. The link opens in Firefox, my default browser. But an IE (or two) starts up anyway (with no window showing).

I wonder what would happen if I were to forgo the use of Excel for a few days?