Solved IE11 Temporary Internet Files & Cookies W/O IE Loaded.

[jamis]

Sorry if this is the wrong forum, but I searched the site and found nothing relevant to this problem. Ever since the Patch Tuesday updates of 11/12/14, the system has been building temporary internet files and cookies by huge amounts even when IE11 has not been selected from the desktop. I can go in as the Admin. and delete all of the temporary internet folders and cookie folders that I am allowed to. There are some that are blocked even from the Admin., reboot the system with no applications launced, and watch the files build. In 30 minutes, there will hundreds of files and dozens of cookies created, even though no browser was launched. The system has two users defined, the Admin and the one we use for normal operation. Our grandkids use this system, hence the second user without Admin rights. IE11 is used only by my wife, as I use FF for my browsing (with AdBlock Plus & Ghostery enabled). We have a standing policy of running CCleaner (v4.19) after every browsing session. I have also noticed that the process SVCHOST LOCAL SERVICE will have many instances running. As many as 10 to 20 of them. I also can stop the browser service for awhile and have to do so to get rid of all of the temporary internet files and the extra SVCHOST processes. If left alone, the browser service will start up and the runaway begins anew. I know IE is integral with Win7. Also the temporary internet files point to html pages we have never gone to. It looks like IE11 is using our system to web crawl the internet for some reason, as if it were part of some botnet. The CPU load can get so high that the cursor will freeze for a couple of seconds. I have tried uninstalling the IE11 updates, but it had no effect on the situation. Norton Internet Security, CCleaner, and SpyBot S&D all find nothing that is a virus or malware.

I'm stumped for a reason. Can anyone shed any light on this issue? Thanks and sorry for such a long first post. Thank you to the mods for moving this to the right forum. Sorry I missed it earlier.

 

[jamis]

I think I found the reason for all of the IE activity. I ran MSERT.EXE last night and it found "win32 trojan downloader" on the system and removed it. It appears that fixed the problem. Here's a link to MSERT.EXE. I ran a full scan as the quick scan didn't find anything. I also went and deleted all of the existing temporary internet files that were on the system.

Microsoft Safety Scanner - Free Virus Scan with the Microsoft Safety Scanner

Update: It's been nearly 24 hours since MSERT.EXE ran and the runaway IE file building has ceased. The system has been shutdown and booted three times in that period and no repeat of the problem. I'm going to call this one solved.