Auto disconnect doesn't work

[Barbara Vaughan]

I have recently upgraded to Windows XP Pro from Windows 98. I have one
dial-up account for internet access. I have set this account to
autodisconnect if inactive for 10 minutes. However, it never
disconnects. I have turned off automatic checking for new email and
other activities that might prevent this feature from working.

One thing that I find puzzling is that if I run msinfo32.exe from the
run menu it shows the time of inactivity before disconnecting as 20
minutes, rather than 10, although I've checked again on internet
options and see it displayed there as 10 minutes. msinfo32 also, in
the next line after saying that the interval is 20 minutes, says that
automatic disconnect is disactivated.

I have already several times forgotten to disconnect and found myself
still connected hours later. Since where I live, all calls, even local
calls, are charged, this problem could become very expensive.

 

[hardhead]

sounds like some software don't want you disconnected,
try stopping one or two things from running see if it
helps, also get a trojan scan.

 

[Barbara Vaughan]

sounds like some software don't want you disconnected,
try stopping one or two things from running see if it
helps, also get a trojan scan.

I seem to have solved the problem by getting rid of Norton's automatic
Live Update. I would have preferred to change the parameters of Live
Update, for instance to checking only when an internet connection is
first made, but I couldn't see any way of doing that.

 

[Barbara Vaughan]

sounds like some software don't want you disconnected,
try stopping one or two things from running see if it
helps, also get a trojan scan.

Checking for processes that might be keeping my internet connection
active led me to another minor thing that's been annoying me.

Let me apologize first if some of the terms I use are a bit peculiar.
My operating system is in Italian, so I'm translating some of the
names of things. Others I remember from past experience.

First I checked under task manager under the network tab to see if
there was any activity when I had closed all my programs that access
the internet. I saw by the graph that there was periodic activity, and
this led me to check the programs tab. There were no programs active,
so I checked the processes tab, which showed dozens of active
processes, one of which was Live Update.

I explained in another post that I succeeded in fixing the
autodisconnect problem. However, I noticed that most of the processes
were owned by a user called "What's America". This has been annoying
me for some time. Under my Documents and Settings folder is a folder
called "What's America", which obviously belongs to this user. The
problem is that if I check the user accounts on the control panel,
there are two users: the administrator (me), whose name is Barbara,
and a guest user who has never been activated. There is no trace of
anything called "What's America". Obviously it's a pseudonym for me,
because if I disconnect "What's America" and reconnect "Barbara", all
the processes are still owned by "What's America".

I don't know how this happened. Maybe the Italian computer geek who
installed XP Pro on my computer thought it was a cute name, but I
would like to get rid of this stupid user name. Is there a registry
key I can edit? Will that also change the folder name under Documents
and Settings? If I just change the folder name, I have a feeling that
lots of programs suddenly won't find files they need. Could I add a
new user and make it the administrator and then delete the original
one?

 

[Barbara Vaughan]

I seem to have solved the problem by getting rid of Norton's automatic
Live Update. I would have preferred to change the parameters of Live
Update, for instance to checking only when an internet connection is
first made, but I couldn't see any way of doing that.

I sopke too soon. The autodisconnect still isn't working. There are
dozens of processes running, but no applications. I don't even know
where to begin with testing which ones are triggering internet
activity. Is there any way of getting a log of all internet activity
so I can find the guilty party?

Also, can anyone explain the discrepancy between internet options,
which reports that autodisconnect should happen after 10 minutes of
inactivity, and msinfo32.exe, which indicates that it should happen
after 20 minutes of inactivity, and that in any case it is
disactivated?

To reiterate, I have only one internet account (dialup) and
autodisconnect worked fine with it before I upgraded to XP Pro.