Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Why is plugin-container.exe involved in receiving email?

more options

Why is plugin-container.exe involved in receiving email? The plugin-container.exe is activated and uses abut 20% of CPU while receiving email into my Outlook Express. I use Windows XP Pro on a desktop PC.

Why is plugin-container.exe involved in receiving email? The plugin-container.exe is activated and uses abut 20% of CPU while receiving email into my Outlook Express. I use Windows XP Pro on a desktop PC.

All Replies (7)

more options

Plugin-container.exe is part of Firefox, not Outlook Express. If you are trying to fetch an embedded video in a message, that might use the plugin container if Firefox is your default browser, but for links and images I would not expect that to be used.

more options

The website may be using a plugin like Silverlight or Flash Player to download specific data.

more options

What kind of data would they download? Would they download it away fropm my PC or download it onto my PC?

more options

The data could be an image, but more likely video or sound. Downloading means that something is going to your PC. What do you mean download away from the PC?

more options

"download away from the PC" would be uploading a file to a web server to attach a file to an email or forum post or web page.

Some websites use a plugin like Flash or Silverlight for uploading (multiple) attachments.

Modified by cor-el

more options

What's that "specific data"? The contents of my emails? Yet another reason to stop using Windows or even quit using computers.

more options

Outlook Express communicates with the internet and renders HTML message content using IE components, not Firefox components. If you exit Firefox before checking email, and restart to a blank page as follows:

Start > Run > firefox.exe "about:blank"

Does plugin-container still show activity?