Only got one pc, why have a network? IP & LAN probs constantly

[Guest]

Might be a silly question, but I only have a single pc, with internet
connection and xp has set up a LAN, it looks like between my modem and pc
(I've got no idea about the technicalities of it).

Problem is, I get frequent issues with this LAN in the form of little icons
in the system tray telling me something or other is wrong, but which usually
resolve themselves eventually. The latest of these, and most worrying, is an
icon which has been popping up in the system tray every time I reboot lately,
showing two PCs communicating, and when I click on it it says "establishing
network connection" or some such thing (I can't reboot at the moment to check
it) and "13kb/s network speed" (might be another number, sorry can't
remember). It just keeps going until I right click on it and say "repair", at
which point a dialog box appears telling me it's resolving my IP address,
then after a few seconds says it couldn't and the icon disappears.

Last night when I left the PC on, Icame back this morning and had been
logged out of everything online, getting the message "invalid IP address" and
similar when I tries to log back in. This went on after a reboot and until I
did the usual repair on the icon in the system tray, at which point
everything went back to normal and I was able to log back into messenger,
uTorrent etc etc

I'm confused! Why must I have a network when I've only got one PC? I'm sick
and tired of these kinds of problems and superfluous network-rleated items
such as "log off" on my start menu and permissions for various users when
there is only one user - me! Please help (sorry if this is a silly question
and has been asked a google times).

 

[RalfG]

As far as logging on or off the computer as a USER, that's a security
feature, not neccessarily a network feature. You can set how you want
Windows to handle that in Control Panel. You can set it to auto-logon at
boot if you want.

Even if you don't have a LAN your connection to your ISP and the internet is
a network connection. By logging in to the ISP your computer essentially
becomes a node in their WAN, so if you want to go online all the network
related items remain neccessary.

There are a number of things that could knock out your network connection to
the ISP. Some ISPs put time limits on dial up connections with automatic
time-outs after a set period. The P2P software should trigger a redial if
its running unless your internet settings prevent it. Messenger programs too
if they are set to automatically log in/reconnect. You could test that
scenario yourself by manually disconnecting from the ISP while the P2P app
is running (with your typical number of downloads).

Some ISP's monitor activity at the computer and will shut down the
connection if they determine it has been idle (no human at the keyboard) for
a set period of time. The connection could also have a time limit setting at
your end, in the dialer software or a router, however you connect to the
ISP.

Since you mentioned utorrent it's worth mentioning that P2P apps themselves
can mess up network connections through opening too many ports or triggering
automatic blocks in your software firewall, or even crashing routers.
uTorrent support has a link to a whole raft of problematic hardware and
software scenarios. Note also that running P2P apps for long periods of time
also attracts the attention of hackers and DOS attacks. Attacked routers and
routing broadband modems are vulnerable to spontaneous reboots or being
locked up, requiring a manual reset. Software firewalls are another
potential source of intermittent problems connecting to a network, LAN or
internet or both.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, that has explained a lot. Funny things is, have been running p2p for
about 6 weeks now (often round the clock) and these are first issues of this
type. But I have been getting some unexplained internet drop-outs, and yes,
messenger etc logs back in after 30 seconds. Plus I'm getting some freezes on
the desktop and have to reboot fairly frequentl. Might be time for a
re-install, but I don't fancy the idea of having to re-download all those
updates etc <groan>.

Also have half my CPU usage being taken up by a process called
'NMIndexStoreSvr.exe', which I assume by the name is some kind of indexer.
Must look into that one. It's constantly taking up half the CPU (of a dual
core 6300!) and has been since I first noticed it a few days ago. Any ideas?
All my firewalls & security measures seem intact; I tested them at a site
called www.GRC.com, a wonderful site I read about in the IT section of the
newspaper, which will perform a leak test and 'shields up' test, trying to
find weaknesses in all of one's ports etc. Said my computer was in stealth
mode on just about every front, which was good, except for one port that was
open (i think it was 1730?) which was commonly used by NetMeeting. Haven't
worked out how to close it yet.

Only other detected problem was firewall (Windows) was only one-way
(incoming), which they said is a common problem because if something gets in
there it can be sending data out with no indication (e.g. zombie bot or
whatever they call them). Excellent site though, maybe you've seen it or
similar. Anyway, I put Trend PCillin Internet Security 2007 on and that seems
to have a two-way firewall; and am running Spybot, Ad-awareon a regular basis
(can't be too careful).

Thanks again for your help, I will keep researching these issues and trying
to learn more.

 

[RalfG]

Replying inline........

Thanks, that has explained a lot. Funny things is, have been running p2p
for
about 6 weeks now (often round the clock) and these are first issues of
this
type. But I have been getting some unexplained internet drop-outs, and
yes,

I connect through a router and if I turn on attack monitoring in the log it
sometimes fills up page upon page of nothing but DOS attacks. Not all the
time, and some P2P are worse than others for attracting them. WinMX was
relatively clean, Bittorrent is sporadic, running Edonkey/Emule it was
chronic. When running Bittorrent clients the safe limit for my router is to
run only 3 simultaneous downloads or the router will crash or reboot
constantly. The number of connected peers has a bearing on the limit though,
the more peer connections the more likelihood of connection trouble.

messenger etc logs back in after 30 seconds. Plus I'm getting some freezes
on
the desktop and have to reboot fairly frequentl. Might be time for a
re-install, but I don't fancy the idea of having to re-download all those
updates etc <groan>.

Actually this is quite a lot inline with what I've been experiencing
recently. I had the same setup for ages without freezing problems then they
suddenly started up. I thought I had it beaten for the last week by using an
MS hotfix but after I uninstalled Norton Firewall yesterday (because it
periodically locked out all network connections) and re-enabled the Windows
Firewall my computer froze solid again this morning. No errors, event log
entries, nothing to indicate what was happening at the time. I figure a
locked up network is a lot better alternative than a randomly freezing
computer so I'm going to try some 3rd party firewall alternatives for a
while. If all else fails I can restore to a point before Norton was
uninstalled. Not a hardware related issue because I was running dual boot
with Windows Vista RC1 for a while and Vista never locked up.

Anyway all that was just leading to the point that I did the total system
reinstall route very recently, because of the freeze up issue, and it made
absolutely no difference. As soon as all of the relevent software/OS updates
were reinstalled the freezing problem started again. I was rid of it for
only about a week, which I thought was due to the hotfix, but coincidentally
the Windows Firewall was also disabled during that same time.

Also have half my CPU usage being taken up by a process called
'NMIndexStoreSvr.exe', which I assume by the name is some kind of indexer.
Must look into that one. It's constantly taking up half the CPU (of a dual
core 6300!) and has been since I first noticed it a few days ago. Any
ideas?

I googled it and the file seems to belong to a Nero app -- Nerovision
express. I don't have that file in my Nero software (updated ver 6) so you
might want to check for Nero compatibility problems with your version.

All my firewalls & security measures seem intact; I tested them at a site
called www.GRC.com, a wonderful site I read about in the IT section of the
newspaper, which will perform a leak test and 'shields up' test, trying to
find weaknesses in all of one's ports etc. Said my computer was in stealth
mode on just about every front, which was good, except for one port that
was
open (i think it was 1730?) which was commonly used by NetMeeting. Haven't
worked out how to close it yet.

Only other detected problem was firewall (Windows) was only one-way
(incoming), which they said is a common problem because if something gets
in
there it can be sending data out with no indication (e.g. zombie bot or
whatever they call them).

Yeah, I remember once surfing onto a website (technical information web
page) and being shocked by a warning that OE (which wasn't running at the
time) was about to send an email to such and such.

Excellent site though, maybe you've seen it or similar.

Have been visiting the GRC site for years now. Sygate used to have a similar
site, probing many more ports, but they were bought out and the old link is
dead now. Symantec has a security scan but requires installing activex
controls.

Anyway, I put Trend PCillin Internet Security 2007 on and that seems
to have a two-way firewall; and am running Spybot, Ad-awareon a regular
basis
(can't be too careful).

Thanks again for your help, I will keep researching these issues and
trying
to learn more.

Good luck.