Using Process Monitor to Troubleshoot Internet Explorer 7 Performance Issues

[Added 2007-01-18: Fix Available for Performance Problems with Internet Explorer 7's Phishing Filter ...]

Previously, I wrote about sluggish behavior with Internet Explorer 7. I had used Process Explorer to help pinpoint the cause of the sluggishness - in this case, it was Internet Explorer 7's (anti)phishing filter. I could also have used a relatively new tool from Microsoft's Windows Sysinternals - Process Monitor.

In Process Monitor, it is easy to get inundated with all of the data that the tool collects. Filters are very critical to enabling one to find the desired information, and the implementation of filters in Process Monitor is top notch. For this exercise, after starting Process Monitor and checking "Generate Profiling Events" on the "Options" menu, I captured events while exercising the web application with the Phishing Filter set to "Turn off automatic website checking" and "Enabled" for the Security zone the web application was in. After capturing events for a minute or so, I set the following filters:
-Process Name is iexplore.exe then Include
-Event Class is Registry then Exclude
-Event Class is File System then Exclude
-Event Class is Process then Exclude

This displayed all "profiling" events for the iexplore.exe process. I double-clicked an event to bring up the "Event Properties" dialog and clicked on the "Stack" tab, which had the following information:

ntdll.dll!KiFastSystemCallRet
kernel32.dll!WaitForSingleObject + 0x12
ole32.dll!GetToSTA + 0x6f
ole32.dll!CRpcChannelBuffer::SwitchAptAndDispatchCall + 0xf6
ole32.dll!CRpcChannelBuffer::SendReceive2 + 0xb9
ole32.dll!CAptRpcChnl::SendReceive + 0xab
ole32.dll!CCtxComChnl::SendReceive + 0x113
RPCRT4.dll!NdrProxySendReceive + 0x43
RPCRT4.dll!NdrClientCall2 + 0x1fa
OLEAUT32.dll!IDispatch_RemoteInvoke_Proxy + 0x1b
OLEAUT32.dll!IDispatch_Invoke_Proxy + 0xb6
ieapfltr.dll!ATL::CComPtr::GetProperty + 0x56
ieapfltr.dll!FieldContainer::VisitInput + 0x1b9
ieapfltr.dll!FieldContainer::VisitAllElements + 0x21d
ieapfltr.dll!FieldContainer::ExtractFieldCount + 0x10e
ieapfltr.dll!FieldContainer::InitFieldCount + 0x9
ieapfltr.dll!PageDetails::Init + 0x315
ieapfltr.dll!PageDetails::Factory + 0x59
ieapfltr.dll!HeuristicsFeatures::InnerExecute + 0x15b
ieapfltr.dll!HeuristicsFeatures::Execute + 0x55
ieapfltr.dll!ProcessingThread::RunPageAnalysis + 0x1b4
ieapfltr.dll!ProcessingThread::RunUrlAndPageAnalysis + 0xdb
ieapfltr.dll!ProcessingThread::Analyze + 0xd3
ieapfltr.dll!ProcessingThread::AnalyzeFrame + 0x249
ieapfltr.dll!ProcessingThread::EnumerateFrames + 0x2e5
ieapfltr.dll!ProcessingThread::EnumerateFrames + 0x249
ieapfltr.dll!ProcessingThread::Evaluate + 0x1ec
ieapfltr.dll!ProcessingThread::Execute + 0x78
ieapfltr.dll!ProcessingThread::Process + 0x24e
ieapfltr.dll!ProcessingThread::Start + 0x72
ieapfltr.dll!Evaluator::ContinueProcessing + 0x21f
ieapfltr.dll!Evaluator::ContinueProcessingWrapper + 0x21
ntdll.dll!RtlpWorkerCallout + 0x70
ntdll.dll!RtlpExecuteWorkerRequest + 0x1a
ntdll.dll!RtlpApcCallout + 0x11
ntdll.dll!RtlpWorkerThread + 0x87
kernel32.dll!BaseThreadStart + 0x37

With this information from Process Monitor, one could come to a similar conclusion - the Phishing Filter in Internet Explorer 7 seems to cause Internet Explorer 7's performance to degrade in certain environments.

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