Multiple Explorer Instances And Firefox Going Berserk

[starbearer]

I have multiple instances of explorer.exe running on my Windows 7 Ultimate,sometimes reaching 6 in number,all of whom consume considerable resources,even when nothing else(Like torrent clients etc.)are running.
It can't be a virus problem,as the system is constantly monitored by Norton 360.So what could it be,and how do I stop such a large drain.
Also,the browser firefox has become quite a memory hog of late,sometimes consuming upto 800 Mb of RAM,even with just 2-3 tabs and just a single window open.There might a download or 2 going on,but I've never had such a big memory hog by firefox before.
What could be the problem?

 

[whs]

Your info is not sufficient to judge whether there is a problem or not. I suggest you post a snip of Task Manager > Processes tab. Make sure you click "Show processes for all users" and sort it by the Memory column.

 

[starbearer]

Well,have attached a snip of my task manager.
There were 2 other explorer tasks open but they just winked out.
As you can see,FF Takes a lot of memory,but it goes up to 700MB As Well.

 

[Bill2]

1) Multiple explorer instances can be launched by applications that call on it improperly. One notorious example is uTorrent, which launches +1 explorer no matter what, when you click 'open containing folder'.

2) In Folder Options, do you have "Launch Folder windows in separate process" checked? Although this should not result in more than 2 explorer.exe processes.

3) You can use Process Explorer to check the start time of each instance, as well as the parent process.

4) Sometimes, explorer.exe will be crashed or created by third party software conflicts. So try testing the issue in Clean Boot.

 

[starbearer]

No Torrent Program Running.
The Relevant Folder Option Is Unchecked.
This issue Crops Up And Then I Have to manually shut down each of the processes bar one.It's tedious and very irritating.Is there a solution to this.
also,what about the FF Problem?

 

[whs]

I see 1 IE.exe most likely active (the 44MB instance) and a second one cached (the 10MB instance). That is not unusual. Regarding FF I cannot comment. Never used it.