Unexplained Internet traffic

[Guest]

Internet traffic is indicated by firewall, contiuous traffic. Zone alarm
tells me that the only active program is Generic Host Process for Win 32
Services (svchost.exe) and if I disable internet access for this program IE
stops working. Norton antivirus doesn't see any virus's. Is this svchost.exe
part of Win XP? Is this spyware?

Everything works fine but it seems like alot of traffic.

Concerned

 

[Chuck]

Internet traffic is indicated by firewall, contiuous traffic. Zone alarm
tells me that the only active program is Generic Host Process for Win 32
Services (svchost.exe) and if I disable internet access for this program IE
stops working. Norton antivirus doesn't see any virus's. Is this svchost.exe
part of Win XP? Is this spyware?

Everything works fine but it seems like alot of traffic.

Concerned

As long as the process is "Svchost.exe", and it is running from
"%SystemRoot%\System32", this is a genuine Windows process. Check carefully and
make sure that it's not "svch0st.exe" or something similar - some malware may
create similarly named modules.
<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314056>