svchost.exe constantly downloading

[Guest]

hi, winxp home, dialup connection.
Recently, whenever i connect to the internet i notice traffic through my
connection even though i have turned off all auto-updates and havent opened
any browers etc.

My zonealarm firewall shows two programs called 'generic host process for
win32 services' are accessing the net. They are taking so much bandwidth that
i have to hit the 'stop internet activity' button whenever my connection is
idle to stop it from downloading.

Norton Antivirus, Ad-Aware, and Spybot detect nothing malicious.

Any ideas on what svchost.exe is downloading an how i can stop this?
thanks

 

[Maurice N ~ MVP]

Hello,
I suggest that you download and run Silent Runners, which will help to determine which programs are auto-loaded at each Windows startup
<http://www.silentrunners.org>

The page has an FAQ link. If you need more guidance see "Using the script"
http://www.silentrunners.org/sr_scriptuse.html

Be aware Silent Runners is a script. You may need to tweak your antivirus or security program to allow it to run.

Here are 2 tools from SysInternals that may help you get an insight on what's running.
Autoruns (checks & shows what's set to auto-load at Windows startup)
http://www.sysinternals.com/nt­w2k/freeware/autoruns.shtml

Process Explorer http://www.sysinternals.com/nt­w2k/freeware/procexp.shtml


It may be that one of your utility programs is checking or getting updates. Have you checked on Norton & your other utilities to see what their update settings are?
You said you "have turned off all auto-updates". What setting is Automatic Updates set to?

You should run some other anti-malware tools (like Ewido and SpySweeper) to help insure that system is malware free.
http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm

<http://www.aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm>

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Security

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware