Ok I take that back...I just checked and it's over 33,000 >

but it was still rising after I completely uninstalled Norton

This is insane...I never seem to have computer issues...This one's got me

I'm not entirely sure you have an issue now....short of forcing explorer to run as separate process, you may be at "norm' for your system. Several processes could be rolling into explorer and thus instead of having 4 or 5 processes running at 5000/6000 you have one giant one. I haven't run Norton in years so I'm not up to their processes, but I do have McAfee and it runs 4 of them. You might want to jump to a Norton Forum and see if any of Nortons' recent upgrades presented the same result to others........

Norton runs 4 processes also...

I dunno...swelling up to 200,000 can't be normal...I monitor my processes on a regular basis and I have never seen it go beyond 40,000K

I'll check out the Norton Forum and see if I can find a patch or someone with a similar problem.

If not...Well, maybe it is time to format.

Thanks for the help Gary...Sorry to waste so much of your time...I really do appreciate it

There is one more thing...run across it a while back. Active X will cache it's files and if I remember right it shows up in explorer.exe. In Internet Options there are 5 Active X settings. They should be:
1- prompt
2- Disabled
3- Disabled
4- Enabled
5- Enabled

....and you're right...nothing should be tacking any process to that level.

My Active X settings are the same as you posted 1-5

I gotta take off for a bit...be back later. I'll let ya know if anything changes.

Thanks again