Got myself a new computer with Windows XP and everything seems to be running fine. But one thing is annoying me greatly and that is my cable modem seems to be constantly sending and receiving information. The little lights are lit up almost all the time, and this never happened prior to the purchase of my new PC. I know XP has this automatic update function, but I’m sure the updating doesn’t happen all the time.
So, is this the norm for Windows XP? What’s going on? What can I do?
On thing you can try right now without installing any ‘sniffer’ software is run a netstat -r command in DOS. This will show you all active traffic between your machine and distant computers. It’ll also give you the IP address of the remote machine which let’s you track it down with a WHOIS command.
Right, I’m at the prompt right now and I tried the netstat -r command and it gave me a bunch of IP addresses. I tried “whois” but nothing came up (not recognised). Did I miss something?
Zonealarm will tell you what processes/programs are accessing the network.
Sorry. I was in a bit of a hurry back there and meant to say ‘netstat -a’ and not ‘-r’
This will just tell you where your PC is sending info to and from where it’s receiving it. Searching for ‘smart whois’ will give you a web page where you can enter any of the IP addresses you find to trace them back to their source.
Personally I don’t think you have any problems and it’s perectly normal for the modem to light-up as such under XP but it’s always best to check for trojans and such that may be on your system.
Also as Revtim said Zonealarm will tell you what’s going in and out…
Thanks. I guess I’m just being a bit paranoid, with a new PC and all. I tried netstat -a and no unusual IPs turned up. Thanks again.