As I've said in another thread, AVG on my system is on its way out. When I've the time to mess with it.

I went in and disabled all the update features in AVG so it couldn't trundle off on its own and get updates. I've also done this with other programs that had a tendency to do their own thing. But tonight, something was out on the town and looked like it was having a very good time.

The modem and HD were having quite a conversion, and not AVG, Maleware, the HP program for my printer, or anything I could think of was surfing the net without permission.

I opened Task Manager, hoping it might show what had gone AWOL, but it only showed my open browser. This thing has me a bit on the worried side.

Is it possible to monitor what access the web? Is there a program, or even something in XP, that lets me know which program is accessing the web?

You can use Netstat and Task Manager to monitor connections.

Here's a Youtube video showing how to use netstat with Task Manager to monitor connections.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp5_xymvUck

***Process Explorer*** from Microsoft gives more information than Task Manager, but if you have any games from the past 3 years that use SecuROM as copy "protection," they'll stop working because SecuROM blacklists Process Explorer.

Homer6, did you also look at your processes tab in the Task Manager? I sometimes find I have an internet slow-down and Processes shows that Steam hasn't shut down after I exit one of their games. Maybe you can see something that is taking up a lot of resources.

I've bookmarked that Process Explorer, Jenny - I'd never heard of it.

Another useful debugger is MSCONFIG; deselect all items on the Startup Tab and see if the problem persists.

You can selectively re-enable them one at a time until you see the activity startup again. Once you’ve identified the specific program, look it up to see if it's a necessary background task (most aren’t).

You might also want to check out some of the other utilities in the Sysinternals Suite, such as Autoruns, TCPView, and Process Monitor.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062.aspx

Thanks guys, it's a lot for me to take in. I'll have to come back, when I've more time, to study all of your replys.



Update: I can't be sure, but after disabling several of AVG's 2011 processes, nothing has ventured out onto the web. So far.

Drac, I did look at Processes but the only thing doing anything aat the time was System Idle.

That YouTube video was very informative, just hope I remember how to look at things if/when something ventures out again.

Homer6

You might want to look into Process Explorer - It's free - it's also a good alternative to the native task manager in Windows - MS owns Process Explorer now - but its still free. After you install it - you can have it replace Task Manager!!

Process Explorer gives you a lot to look at - deep into the processes. I go on and on - but give it a try. Also if you are running Vista/Windows 7 look at MS's Security Essentials too - Free !

Just a suggestion from a Computer Tech by profession.

Thanks for the suggestion, sureshot. It is something to think about.