IE8 TabProcessGrowth question

I have a situation with an IE8 process that will remain in task manager for about a minute and a half after closing down IE8. Is this normal? I've gotten in the habit of monitoring this prior to shutting down the laptop. My suspicions were aroused once when rebooting the laptop, opening IE8 only to get the last session had crashed dialog. Since then, as mentioned, I've monitored it and will not shutdown the laptop until the last IE8 process has disappeared from the task manager. In doing that I have not had the crash dialog to appear again. I once read somewhere on the net that the TabProcessGrowth can be set to a minimum number through GPO or registry. It also gave the minimum number allowed which would keep Protected Mode: On. I want to say it was two but can't remember and can't find the article. Anyone know the number? Anyone have any thoughts on the lingering process? It may be normal but I don't know for sure.

Hmmm, I can not say that I have ever encountered this in Win 7 running IE8, nor for that matter with Win XP Pro or Vista running IE8. In 3 or 4 different machines with different versions of Windows, IE8 has never manifested this behavior...not saying that it can't happen though...

I do not (have not had the need to) check Task Manager prior to shutting down, but I can tell you that it is very common for me to shut down right after closing out of IE8, and I have yet to have a related shut down issue.

What may be an issue however, is some other process/task, that may be causing this specific issue? Something to think about! When I went to Win 7, I thought my older version of Acronis was running properly...turned out that there was a compatibility problem, and it manifested itself in a totally unexpected way, which did not even make me suspect Acronis, until I stubled over it as the issue!