When I make a wireless connection (or even a dial up connection) to the Internet, a download begins. I have not requested this, and I have waited to see if it stops. It never seems to. Even after 500MB has been transmitted. I have tried Selective Startup with just everything suppressed except what is needed to recognize the wireless device. That does not correct the problem.I have the firewall enabled, and have Norton Antivirus.Is there some way to trace the communications to tell where this is coming from? Or some other suggestion as to how to fix this? 1 person needs an answerI do too

The freeware "TCPView for Windows" will show you a list of processes on your machine that are communicating over your network, the number of bytes transferred, the destination address, etc. With this amount of data being transferred, you should be able to identify the process responsible.TCPView: < http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897437 >HTH, JW

JW,Thanks very much for the tip. I'll give it a try and post the result here.

Have you got your wireless connection encryptted?If 'No', there's your answer.Someone else is 'leeching' your WiFi signal, using it to 'connect' their Wifi set-up to the Internet, whether you are using yours or not.In short, you're paying for their 'Internet time', as well as your own.Unless your WiFi set-up is encryptted, it is never the safest of connections at the best of times.Google proved that, when/where-ever they conducted their "Street View' enhancements, as they drove unprotected WiFi modems they collected personal details/Bank Acccount details, the works.. They said. "Ooops, sorry!" but, the damage was already done.Speak to your ISP provider, if you dont know 'how to' do it.

I'm using Virgin Mobile wireless, and I don't think it's encrypted. I'll look into that. ThanksRegarding the TCPView: I downloaded it and fired it up. The downloads are coming from Akamai Technologies, or maybe more properly put,through Akamai Technologies. I'm not sure how to trace it deeper than that. I have turned off automatic updates for Windows and other software. If this download has been requested by software on my machine (an XP), why does it never stop? Could it be that Akamai has been hacked and is simply a conduit for some sort of malicious software? This is a problem because the heavy traffic slows up my surfing, and uses up the allotted megabytes very quickly.BTW, I had the same problem with my dial up line, although it was much slower - which leads me to believe that my fundamental problem is not due to someone leeching my WiFi signal..

The next step is to find which process or service is using this connection.Try downloading/installing "Process Explorer" which is like a task manager on streoids:Process Explorer: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653This will show all processes running on your system. Double-clicking on a line will bring up more information on that line including a "disk and network" tab. Find your task/process there. If it is a task near the bottom (underneath "Explorer.exe", then you can suspend the process by right-clicking on the line and selecting "suspend". If the communications stops, you know which task is causing you problems. If it is a line under "services.exe", then you can bring up the services window: Start-> Run -> "services.msc"and attempt to find a "Running" task there, click on it, and pause the task to find the one causing the problem.Once you identify the task, you can take the appropriate measures to either stop it or understand it.HTH, JW

Thanks, JW. I really appreciate your help. I downloaded Process Explorer as you suggested. It does seem to be a very helpful bit of software - one wonders why it wasn't included in the original XP operating system.I read some reviews of it, and some people seemed to think it was dangerous. So I approached it with caution.Using TCPView I was able to find the Process ID of the process that was continuously downloading (Rcvd Bytes column was continually increasing). Then, using this PID I went to Process Explorer and found the process on that screen. It was identified as svchost.exe and described as Generic Host Process for Win32 Services. I double clicked on that line and went to the Disk and Network tab, and sure enough the Receive Bytes are steadily racking up. This is of course under services.exe - so as you suggested I did the Start > Run and keyed in services.msc as you suggested. There I found three screens of stuff - about half of the services were "started" status, but none showed a "running" status.There are so many "started" services - I am a bit stumped trying to find the actual task that is causing the problem. Is there something more in Process Explorer (or TCPView) that will help me zero in on the particular task?Could any of this be due to Windows Genuine Advantage? I signed up for this - or maybe I should say I finally caved in to it. It seems that some people thought it was MS's own brand of spyware.

You are so close.First of all, Process Explorer is not dangerous. Its main danger is "Too much information" -- although if you stop/suspend the wrong tasks or improperly mess with priorities you can kill the system... but as far as I can tell, there's nothing you can do in Process Explorer that can't be cured by simply rebooting your machine.Next, in Process Explorer, all you have to do is hover your cursor over the "svchost.exe" that you've identified. When you do this, a pop-up window will appear showing you all the services that are covered under that instance of svchost. One of them will show a list of about 25 or so items and it is my guess that this will be the one causing you problems. To press my luck even further, I'll guess that the one labeled "Windows Management Instrumentation" is the one causing the problem (so if you're going to check all these out, start from the bottom of the list). I predict this because at work our machines are all monitored and configured remotely by the company and there are times when I see almost 100% CPU usage and megabytes of data transferred under this service. Suspending the service ends all that almost immediately but I don't usually do this because in my case it's not really a bad thing.I doubt that Windows Genuine Advantage has anything to do with this.HTH, JW

I tried putting a Pause on Windows Management Instrumentation, but it did not stop the downloads. Then I put a Stop (Pause was not an option) on the first service on the list (can't remember the name of it). Still no help. It made the service disappear from the list. (Yikes - can I get it back?). Then I stopped (again, Pause was not an option) the BITS service. This seemed to stop certain things from appearing on the TCPView screen - so I could not be sure if the download was still running.I am hoping I did not wreck anything. I will try re-booting to see if the services re-appear.

HiFirst, scan thoroughly you computer for Viruses and Malwares.Then download and install this freeware, http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/Run it and look at the menus it will provide you with an exact data about the Downloads/Upload traffic.Akamai Technologies servers are one the most reputable server systems on the Internet.AFAIK, Microsoft uses them for part of its downloads.Try to temp. disable the Update, Search, and Indexing of WinXP and see if the unexplainable traffic is reduced.Also, provide some info about your Network/Internet connection, devices that are uses and their speed.P.S. You have a technical problem, it will also be more fruitful if you will concentrate on solving the problem rather than get concern aboutSocio-Compu-Politoc Jargonlike, "It seems that some people thought it was MS's own brand of spyware". -------------------------------My posts reflect my understanding and experience. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion or view of Microsoft, or anyone else.Jack - Microsoft MVP, Windows Networking. WWW.EZLAN.NET

Don't worry, simply stopping any service will not survive a reboot. After rebooting, things will be back to the way they were.I tend to agree with Jack in that this is probably just an update being downloaded from Microsoft. You might just want to connect your computer to a fast hardwire connection and get it all over with.HTH,-- JW

Thanks to both JW and Jack for you patience.I downloaded the free PRTG Network Monitor but haven't as yet been able to get it to work. When I fire it up it goes to my browser but I get the message "connection to 28.255.109.96 was interrupted while the page was loading". So I'll keep working on this.I have already disabled WinXP automatic updates - or at least I thought I had. Maybe I missed something here. I didn't quite understand Jack's suggestion to disable Search and Indexing. I have downloaded and installed all MS updates that are high priority.I have already scanned the entire system with Norton and with Malwarebytes. Nothing detected except cookies. My Internet connection is Virgin Mobil, using the wireless MC760 antenna, and speeds are around 2 megabytes/minute downloading. I will continue to play around with stopping the services we discussed earlier - one at a time. I was relieved to see that these service items come back after a re-boot, and feel somewhat more confident about stopping them. I must say that the notes on the Process Explorer screen about what happens when a service is stopped are somewhat daunting. JW - what is a fast hardwire connection?

HiDo not stop any services; you will end up that nothing works.With all due respect your posts might indicate that your level of knowledge is Not at a point to deal with these issues and you are better off seeking advice from a more knowledgeable friend or get professional advise.In case like this Process explorer is more useful to see if there is a process generated by an Application that should not be running, and leave the svchost processes alone.You should also look at the Startup and see if there is something loading that should not be there.http://www.ezlan.net/infestation.html#startup Jack - Microsoft MVP, Windows Networking. WWW.EZLAN.NET

Thanks again - this time to Jack.I agree that I am probably lacking in enough understanding to solve this problem in a forum like this. I got PRTG Network Monitor to work, but did not find anything in it that seemed to track the connection that is causing the continuous download. Quite possibly I did not know how to use it properly - it came with a rather large manual which I did not read completely, and what I did read I found to be of a level of technicality that was beyond me. It seemed to be a good piece of software and I appreciated a chance to do a free download...I looked at your ezlan site and that was helpful. I had already done Start>Run>msconfig and experimented with turning off a variety of the Startup items, and also on the Services tab most of the non-Microsoft services. At this time I have turned off all of the Startup Items, and on the Services tab I have turned off all of the non-Microsoft services except Norton Anti-virus and NovaCore SDK (which is necessary to make the Virgin Mobile connection). I left all of the Microsoft services turned on. Needless to say, this setup did not stop the downloading. But here is a bright note: I stopped the downloading by 1) finding on TCPview the process ID (PID) that was racking up the continuously increasing received bytes, 2) using this PID I went to Process Explorer and double clicked on the process that had this PID. Then, on the Services tab I read over each of the 25-odd services that were running and took a guess and stopped the BITS service. Presto! The downloading stopped. This service seems to take care of updates to the operating system and other things, and I suppose it is a rather crude way of fixing things. I see that in the Startup screen I can uncheck the BITS service, and maybe I should do this to prevent it from starting on Startup.So you can see I have a fix of some sorts, although I realize I will have to undo it occasionally to get Microsoft updates. I will continue to run in Selective Startup mode, and will uncheck the BITS service in the Service section of the Startup window.At the risk of taking more of your time, I pose a few (hopefully) final questions: Does my "fix" provide any clue as to what sort of a problem I have? How much harm am I doing by suppressing the BITS service?Thanks very much.Dave

Congratulations, Dave,Good work finding the problem, although msconfig is probably the wrong way to turn it off in the long run. If you go to the "services" window, double-click on it, and change the "Startup Type" from "Automatic" or "Manual" to "Disabled", this will turn it off as well and it won't bug you at every boot that you are starting up in debug mode (re-enable it in msconfig first).I do not have BITS on my machine, so I looked it up online. Wikipedia has a decent article on it: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_Intelligent_Transfer_Service >that includes a link to a Microsoft BITS Administration utility (BITSAdmin). It also indicates that BITS only uses excess bandwidth/CPU when uploading or downloading so it really shouldn't slow things down much. The article also gives a list of non-Microsoft applications that use it -- maybe you'll recognize one of them.I'm not sure you technically have a problem other than perhaps a large update is trying to be pushed through a slow internet connection. Perhaps the BITSAdmin program can list the files that are in the queue to be transferred?-- JW

Thanks to JW and to Jack. I will turn the BITS service off as you suggest, JW.I had a look at the Wikipedia article and now have a much better understanding. I think in my case there must be some sort of malware that is using BITS - or else there is some legitimate download that has gone haywire. The reason I feel this way is that I have let the download run for a very long time and it has never stopped - even after 500MB has been downloaded.Maybe it wouldn't matter except that in February Virgin Mobile is going to set up a 5GB limit/month on my type of contract, and after that limit is reached the speeds are deliberately slowed down. At full speed I am getting something like 2MBytes/minute downloading. - and naturally I want very much to avoid reaching the monthly limit.I will try to find some software (perhaps the one suggested by JW above) to probe more into what is running through BITS. I'll report back here on that if I have any luck.It is surprising to me that, with Windows XP, it is so difficult to track these communications connections. I worked for many years on the IBM AS/400 and that system has some very good built-in tracing. Thanks again to all who offered their suggestions!Dave

Here is a note about tracking BITS activity.I downloaded the BITSAdmin tool from Microsoft, and started my computer up with the BITS service turned on. I verified that the downloading was going on by using TCPview and Process Explorer, as I described in earlier comments.Then I keyed in on the command line bitsadmin /list /allusers and pressed enter. A long list of jobs displayed - 100 or more. Most of them were Norton Antivirus stuff, and were queued up. Other jobs had errors. I don't know enough about the bitsadmin command to interpret the details of the list, but I have the impression that Norton downloads are causing my problem.I hope this discussion will be of use to others. I certainly learned a lot from this investigation.Dave

I must admit I've learned a few things too. ;-)Of course the correct way to fix this problem would be to identify which program(s) belongs to the entries in the list that seem to be hung, then perhaps remove then reinstall that program on your machine and perhaps clean-out the BITS queue as well.Cheers, JW

One more thing: To clear out the stuff in the BITS queue, I went to the command line and keyed: bitsadmin /resetThat cleared out 107 queued jobs! They were apparently all Norton Antivirus push downloads. How they got so stacked up I cannot imagine. I thought I had taken care of updating Norton by manually doing it on their window, but somehow their stuff kept trying to push down through BITS.