I’m getting a message from Zonealarm (which I recently installed) telling me that Generic Hosp Process for Win32 Services is trying to talk to 192.168.0.1. What does this mean, and is this a bad thing?
Some programs from time to time will contact the web site that they were downloaded from to see if there are any upgrades to notify you about, or they may just upgrade themselves.
Then again, you could have a virus or some other type of unwanted program doing unwanted things. I don’t know though, because I’ve never heard of Generic Hosp Process.
At a wild guess, you’ve got a broadband connection. 192.168 IPs are normally reserved for private LANs (reserved class C nets actually). I’m wireless right now and use a 192.168 IP to talk with the router.
I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. I’m sure someone smarter than me will be along shortly.
Without getting into too many details, the generic host process is used for many different things, mailnly networking functions such as the DNS client, NetBIOS traffic and other things.
It is being blocked because you have set Zone Alarm to block everything by default. If you are still able to do everything you need to do with it blocked, feel free to leave it that way. If you have trouble surfing the web, checking email, or accessing any other machines on the network, you may want to re-enable it.
The fact that it is going to a 192.168.x.x network means it will go no further than the first router, which is generally in your house if you have broadband.
I hope this helps.
MC$E