Question

I’m using Selenium’s IE driver for web testing. After launching IE8 and closing it, the IEDriverServer.exe process doesn’t go away. If I run the test again, a new process gets created and keeps hanging. What is wrong with my test code or Selenium setup?

using (var driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(
    new InternetExplorerOptions() { 
        IntroduceInstabilityByIgnoringProtectedModeSettings = true }))
{
    Assert.IsTrue(true);
    driver.Close();
}

Answer 1

What version of the Selenium WebDriver .NET bindings are you running? The semantics of the .NET InternetExplorerDriver class’s .Dispose() method in 2.25 or earlier are not equivalent to calling the .Quit() method. This means that to correctly shut down the IEDriverServer.exe process in versions 2.25 or earlier of the .NET bindings, you have to explicitly call the .Quit() method. It should be noted that with the yet-to-be-released 2.26 version of the .NET bindings, this has changed, and calling .Dispose() will be equivalent to calling .Quit(), whether called explicitly or implicitly via the using construct.