Attn. Network wizards

[phyllis]

Help a technically illiterate brother out here... I've noticed this a couple times, and yet to figure it out... earlier, I had IE open to CNN's page, and OutlookExpress open, and nothing else(that I could find). CNN's page was not reloading, neither was mail being checked/downloaded, and yet my network graph was showing data flowing in. I shut down IE, and OE, and it was still incoming. How would I go about determining what I was connected to that was feeding stuff in ? It wasn't showing a Windows update either...so I'm at a loss for what I was getting. I finally disconnected, and reconnected, and now it's not doing it(yet) Any ideas ?

[CingularDuality]

Originally Posted by phyllis

Help a technically illiterate brother out here... I've noticed this a couple times, and yet to figure it out... earlier, I had IE open to CNN's page, and OutlookExpress open, and nothing else(that I could find). CNN's page was not reloading, neither was mail being checked/downloaded, and yet my network graph was showing data flowing in. I shut down IE, and OE, and it was still incoming. How would I go about determining what I was connected to that was feeding stuff in ? It wasn't showing a Windows update either...so I'm at a loss for what I was getting. I finally disconnected, and reconnected, and now it's not doing it(yet) Any ideas ?

Do you have a firewall? Most software firewalls will tell you what traffic is going in/out of your computer. Also, just because you close the Outlook Express window, doesn't mean everything is shut down. msmsgs.exe is Microsoft Messenger, I believe, and it automatically starts up every time I use OE.

[=DdogG=]

have you installed bits yet?

background intelligent transfer service.

basically a download manager for windows update.

with dialup, you might not see and update for a few days or a week, but it takes inactivity and dl's updates so it is more effortless to update windows. and like DL managers, it resumes and stops when needed.

[phyllis]

Yea, I use the MS firewall on occasion, used to have Zone Alarm, but it caused issues with some games...so I rarely use a firewall at all...with the dial-up, it's not like I'm constantly connected anyway Oh...and msmsgs.exe is always running, but even when I check the processes list in task manager, it doesn't show any action there either...

I don't have anything special for Windows Updates...it d/l's when it can, I've shut the connection, and restarted many times, and it always resumes itself, however, when it is working on an update, there is a little icon down there that shows it...
I wasn't sure if there was a way to find what port the info was coming into, or to what IP it was connected to...maybe what I'm looking for isn't available. I'm probably not searching Google with the right words...none of the monitoring programs I've looked at so far did what I want to see....

[=DdogG=]

bits will dl stuff without that icon.........

[ImAWuss]

Try this tool. I just installed i and tested on Windows XP Pro SP2. Says it runs on all versions. It's only a simple tool that will tell you where connections are going. Doesn't actualy tell you what programs are running the connection. http://uu0jc.kiev.ua/software/tcp.html

[phyllis]

Thanks Wuss...that's a start...at least I could look and see what the pc was connected to anyway Next will be to figure out what is actually coming in, or where it's going on the hdd.

[Wintermute]

You should expect small amounts of data to go in and out all the time. On a LAN computers ping each other and do various network related communication pretty frequently but never in large amounts. Not entirely sure if the same thing happens over dialup or not. Windows loves doing sneaky things behind your back so you can never be sure if things are meant to be happening or not...