XP accessing internet automatically

[stevndal]

Hi,
Just got an XP home laptop and every few minutes it tries to access the internet and send messages (I think). When the task is running, it pops into the program bar and has an icon of an "i" overlayed on a monitor with the heading "unsent messages". I thought this was Messenger. So I deleted messenger. No luck. Then I deleted Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. Still yet, something keeps running. The machine has never been connected to the web (It's only four days old).
I can't find what program is doing this, nor can I find a command in the startup, etc.
Can anyone help. When it tries to run, it actually kicks me out of my game of Diablo II (minimizes it).
Thanks
Steven

 

[thegil]

I'm not sure whether the program is automatically updating windows, anti-virus, etc., but my computer is doing the same thing. I will be interested in reading a good explanation. I did switch my automatic updates to 3 a.m. and that seems to have helped.

 

[linney]

A firewall (not XP's) will tell you what is trying to access the Internet.

Some links might interest you in this thread.

How Reliable is internet Connection Firewall (ICF) ?
thread779-711446

 

[Xemus]

Automatic-unauthorized connection attempts are a possible sign of spyware.
Spybot

http://security.kolla.de

AdAware

http://www.lavasoftusa.com

Hijack This

http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/

Three free programs that will help identify and eliminate your issues.

http://www.closedsocket.com

 

[bcastner]

This may be innocent behavior. An example is a program that is set to "Autoupdate", such as an antivirus program.

There are actually two autodial mechanisms in XP. One is configured through IE and is triggered by calls to the wininet API. The other is the "rasauto" service which is triggered by when certain network events occur.

IE's autodial usually pops up and dials when applications are launched.

The rasauto service pops up the following prompt at any time: &quot;You or a program has requested information from <location>. Which connection do you want to use?&quot;

To prevent auto-dialing from IE, use the Internet Options settings in IE.

To prevent rasauto's prompts, just stop and disable the &quot;rasauto&quot; service.
You can do this through the computer management console, or by entering the following two commands via cmd.exe:

sc config rasauto start= disabled
net stop rasauto

One thing to be aware of is that the rasauto service is used by connection sharing. If you have connection sharing enabled on your computer (e.g. your computer is being used as the home network's Internet gateway), then you should not disable or stop the rasauto service.

To view the list of names and addresses recorded by AutoDial, type the following command at a command prompt:
rasautou -s

To delete a name or address entry from the list: Start/Run/Regedit

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\RAS Autodial\Addresses

You can delete any TCP/IP addresses that you see under this key. Note that AutoDial can use IP addresses, DNS fully qualified domain names (FQDN), and NetBIOS names.

 

[linney]

Do you get any clues about this process when you hover the mouse arrow over the icon (from the balloon tips)?