Fix Available for Performance Problems with Internet Explorer 7’s Phishing Filter
I don’t know how I missed it (well, I suspect it’s related to quirks in the method(s) in which Microsoft makes notifications of new KB articles available), but it seems that Microsoft has released an update to Internet Explorer 7 to address the performance issues with the Phishing Filter that I had previously (here and here) encountered.
The KB article (The computer may respond very slowly as the Phishing Filter evaluates Web page contents in Internet Explorer 7) is dated December 12, 2006, and contains links to download pages for various versions of Windows that Internet Explorer 7 can run on. Your copy of Windows has to pass the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) check before Microsoft will allow you to download the fix. Once downloaded, installation is straightforward; depending on what programs you have open at the time, you may be required to reboot after the installation finishes.
It is interesting to note that the Cause section (below) explains exactly the conditions I was operating in, and the behavior I observed.
CAUSE
This problem occurs when one or more of the following conditions are true:
• The Web page contains many frames.
• You browse many frames in a short time.
Internet Explorer 7 evaluates the whole Web page when you browse a frame. Therefore, CPU usage may be very high.
Additionally, the workaround (at the bottom of the article) is to disable the Phishing Filter on the “Advanced” tab of the “Internet Options”.
Prior to installing the update, I set the Phishing Filter to “Turn off automatic website checking” (”Advanced” tab of “Internet Options”) and made sure it was “Enabled” for the Internet Explorer Security Zone I was working in. I then verified that I was able to recreate the behavior I witnessed in The Case of the Sluggish Internet Explorer 7.
I installed the update and needed to reboot (I forgot I had SharpReader open, and it had loaded MSHTML.DLL). Upon reboot I attempted to cause the CPU to spike by doing precisely the things that had caused the problem in the past. I didn’t have any luck in doing so. In fact, none of the threads in the iexplore.exe process were consuming an inordinate amount of CPU. It would appear that the fix involved, to some extent at least, changing the technique Internet Explorer uses to queue up requests to have something evaluated by the Phishing Filter (previously, I had hypothesized that Internet Explorer 7 was using the ThreadPool API and was creating a new thread for each request). Based on my explorations so far, the fix takes care of the problem. Kudos to Microsoft for recognizing the problem and taking appropriate steps to address it.
The fix updates 2 Windows / Internet Explorer program files in %windir%\system32 - ieapfltr.dll (the “Microsoft Phishing Filter”) and mshtml.dll (the “Microsoft (R) HTML Viewer”). I didn’t take the time to save off copies of the previous versions of these DLLs to try to compare differences (perhaps an exercise for another day). However, the new MSHTML.DLL has a date of 2006-11-09, and the new IEAPFLTR.DLL has a date of 2006-11-08. Internet Explorer 7.0 was released on 2006-10-18. So it appears that Microsoft knew of problems with the Phishing Filter performance prior to launch; obviously this wasn’t a showstopper issue. It also would appear to have taken just over 1 month for the fix to make its way through the testing / release process. I guess that’s not too bad, considering that some high-priority / critical security updates take at least that long. On the other hand, this is a new feature so it didn’t have the legacy behind it that some of the security updates have to contend with. I guess I should just be happy to have a fix… ;)
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