Microsoft Edge 'Processes" Shown in Task Manager, Windows 10 v1909 (updated to latest build)

You know before chromium on a similar blog, when people asked why chrome takes forever when many windows, and also opening closing windows. I reported the correct answer before anybody else, that it's because they are using process instead of threads for each tab. While it gives only benefit of a crashed process doesn't effect other process where a thread could, it means the o.s. has to allocate 2-4 gb of memory for every window, that kind of a lot. And that was reason because windows wasn't optimized to allocate that much memory quickly, cause that's a lot of memory and people don't do that often. So now we see chromium did ancknowledge that issue only after myself come to correct conclusion. But of course, they do it in way, to make it out like they "knew" what they were doing all along, well you are still wrong. Why do you need a seperate process to handle web pages, randering, gpu, etc? When it all part of one logical program the web browser. And you see you still miss the point, that a process ISN"T a unit of execution, it's actually just a data structure, a 2-4gb data range, that happen to be associated with at least one thread. So your still wrong, really, again, in your process use in design, but now you've not coupled it to browser pages. Your welcome ounce again chromium even though I used edge, and now they force me to use windows chromium variant. At end of day, html and js does the same thing it did 20 years ago, and it don't require this much memory of 2 process let alone 9.

and the reason is because chromium is open source based and android / linux. While windows has been apparently investing a lot into open source linux based software apparently for some reason, there no reason to believe anybody was payed well by microsoft to write this. They are basically doing what apple and google have been doing which is stealing free software and proprietarizign it as their own, and selling originally free software. Basically you get what you pay for. And still nobody purchases it of course so it makes money from marketing mechanisms.

Thank you, Firedog.  My main concern is web security and privacy, and I'm asking here in this forum, albeit in a round-about manner, to see if MS-Edge's child processes (still lingering even after a warm pc re-boot) are an indication that some entity has latched on to my connections and is using my pc as the 'door-opener' to gain access to the password-protected websites that I visit.  I've already had one or two websites asking me to verify if I am a robot, several times in 2020,  because they detect a lot of activity from my network.

I've been intimately using MS OSes since the 1980s when MS-DOS was it, and although I am no longer current with recent developments, I can still understand what techies are saying.  My current, 5-year old desktop ran like a dream on Windows Vista and I've also been an IE user for years.  A free upgrade to Windows 10 came and I naturally switched to it, but I was still an IE 11 user until Windows 10 v1903. I switched to MS-Edge after that only because some websites that I regularly visit, started to 'demand' the abandonment of IE11.  All things considered, everything came to a head when the NSA revealed a big hole in Windows 10 back in January 2020.  Since then, I've found that I will need to upgrade my desktop pc with additional RAM and a new SSD.  This is the reason why I've been posting again actively in the MS Community this year, after a hiatus of about 3-years: to stabilize Win 10 v1909, upgrade my desktop pc hardware and finally switch over to Windows 10 2020H2. 

I hope the above revelation has cleared up the expectations from both sides of the aisle. 

The nice thing about making performance and/or behavioral observations (not just of software), is the chance that somebody in the know recognizes the problem and just quietly acts on it.  In this instant case: the still-lingering MS-Edge child processes are no more!

Hello, Alexander_PH, 

You may need to install an update to your Microsoft Edge as I see that you are not on the latest version.  There was a new Update released since you posted this message.

As for why there are 3 processes when you launch an InPrivate window, that would likely be one for the Window, and one for the Tab that you have open, I'm not immediately certain what the third would be for, but you can check that in the Browser Task Manager which can be accessed through the Settings and More menu [ ... ], More tools, and Browser task manger, or Shift+Esc.

Gabriel

As Gabriel suggested, you get a much clearer view of which Edge processes are running by opening the browser task manager (Shift-Escape). Here you will see that each tab is running in its own process, but also there are separate processes for the GPU and for each service the browser needs, like the network service. Apart from these, each extension runs in its own process, and you may also see others for sub-frames loaded by websites, e.g. for page analytics or for a feedback applet. All this means that the browser is much more stable than others you may have used in the past: if one tab crashes, for example, it won't necessarily take the rest of the browser with it. If the browser starts struggling to display pages properly because it's short of memory, stopping the GPU process will release the memory it may have been hogging; it will then restart with the minimum amount of memory it needs and restore the display to normal.

You'll also see that many of these processes are not consuming processor resources, although each one occupies a bit of memory. Each extension runs independently so if one crashes for whatever reason, the others and the browser itself should be able to carry on regardless. 

One great feature of the browser is that if it stops unexpectedly - as all browsers do occasionally - you will usually be able to restart it and carry on where you left off. This is only possible by virtue of all those tab processes running. The newly-introduced 'sleeping tabs' feature will reduce the load on the processor still more: enable the flag at edge://flags/#edge-sleeping-tabs to see it at work. A sleeping tab consumes no resources at all until it's woken up.

Now that you know what's going on, what are your concerns about the way Edge runs? Are you having problems with it? Which?