why plugins are so processor consuming? - or am I a dummy?

I've found that idle TLB plugins (I have WinAmp Ctl and Weather on a toolbar panel) consume about 20 to 35 percent of CPU in Explorer.exe process (even when no WinAmp running/no weather polls active). If I remove (hide) this toolbar, CPU load falls to 0-1% even while I have another TLB's toolbar for QuickLaunch (without plugins)...
Is this correct, or did someone note such a behaviour?
I have P4/1.4 GHz/512 MB RAM/WinXP

For Weather Monitor try to set the connection type into LAN or Dial-up connection. Currently there are can be problems with "Use IE settings" option.

Have tried it, affects nothing. Even if I completely delete Weather Monitor from the toolbar it still takes about 20-30% CPU... ???

yktoo,

I checked out what you said about CPU usage in explorer.exe. I do not believe that the problem is with the plugins or TLB. There is a problem with Windows XP and explorer.exe but this is not the case here.

I was reading your problem and left the IE window opened and here is what I did to test the situation. I deleted all my plugins and the CPU usage in explorer.exe remained the same at about 11 to 17%. I closed all of the IE windows and the CPU dropped to 0 to 2%. I reopened an IE window and it increased to 2%. I went back to this forum and your question and it went up to 15 to 25%. I closed the window and it went back to 2%. I repeated this 5 times with the same results.

I noticed that your Avatar is Macromedia Flash. It appears that Macromedia Flash is eating up the CPU usage in explorer.exe. All the other Avatars are gif or animated gif files. Try it yourself and see if it makes a difference. We have similar computers. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but it's worth a try to see if I'm right.

I cannot say for sure if it's just TLB plugins' problem. I've tried all these cases from the very start, and found that only panel with plugins causes CPU utilization to raise up to 30-35%. The picture I posted before shows how it looks when such a panel is docked on the taskbar. The picture below shows how it looks when no tasks/no plugin toolbar are visible at all (but still having QuickLaunch TLB's toolbar).
I've nothing to say/to surmise more...

yktoo,

This is a strange problem. In my other post, I mentioned that yesterday all my tests pointed to the Avatar raising my CPU for explorer.exe. Today, even with this page and your Avatar showing, my CPU for explorer.com is only 0 to 3%. Go figure! ???

I used to have problems with explorer.exe going to 100% and staying that way until I killed the process and restarted it. That is a problem that Microsoft knows about and may fix eventually. This problem occurred most with TLB and its plugins and happened very often. Possibly, this is similar to your problem.

I rarely have a problem like this anymore after I followed Yuri's advice and uninstalled TLB and each plugin and removed every instance of the file named tlbdata. Reinstall the latest versions of TLB and the plugins you use and see what happens.