Explorer causes steady bandwidth trickle?

[Toby Newman]

If I look at the networking tab in task manager, I can see a steady trickle
of bandwidth being used at all times. I've tried killing all applications,
and it remains. If I then try killing processes, it still remains, that is
until I kill "explorer". Then it drops to zero.

Any idea why explorer is steadily uploading and downloading? Ever seen this
before?

I took a screen grab of the network activity here:

http://www.asktoby.com/miscimages/bandwidthtrickle.gif

I have a 600kbps cable internet connection through ethernet, and from the
graph I am uploading and downloading about 4.7kbps at all times.

Perhaps you can suggest an app that will let me inspect this traffic and
find out what it is/where it is going?

 

[Toby Newman]

I should add I am behind a hardware firewall (linksys router) and am also
running PCCillin's software firewall.

 

[Ramesh [MVP]]

Toby,

Using the s/w firewall, you should be able to check which applications are using the internet; this is the first thing to do. And a "netstat -o" command (from the Command Prompt) shows the applications which are accessing net (you can compare the PID to that in Task Manager to know the application names). You may also consider using TCPView utility from Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com. In addition, run Ad-Aware to check if it is caused by adware and if so, remove them. Ad-Aware can be downloaded from www.lavasoftusa.com

--
Ramesh - Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Shell
http://www.mvps.org/sramesh2k


I should add I am behind a hardware firewall (linksys router) and am also
running PCCillin's software firewall.

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Spyware calling home?

Steve