[bschwarz]

Something seems a little strange lately.

I've spent a lot ot fime thinking I might have a virus on my laptop but I've gone through the sites recommended by Tech Support Guy and nothing turns up.

Can someone please answer this one question?

If I double click on the Internet Connect status icon in teh system tray I notice that My Computer is sending about 12-13 units (bytes, bits, packets - I'm not sure) per second and receiving about 3 units per second. The internet Gateway however indicates that nothing is being send or received each second.

I'm not running anything that I know of that might be accessing the internet other than this page.

Can I determine anything from this?
Does it suggest that something may be running on my laptop trying to access teh internet?

Brian

ps - I'm running XP SP3

[telecom69]

there is always something going on behind the scenes as it were, but if you have a firewall and anti-virus installed they should take care of things for you,if you are really worried about viruses etc maybe you should post a query in the Malware HJT forum and see how you go from there, its very busy in there so you will have to be patient,too many problems, too few helpers....

[lunarlander]

Windows 'chats' a lot with other Windows PCs on the network. If you don't like it, turning off the Server, Workstation and Computer Browser services may help.

[bschwarz]

Ok - I'm a little embarrassed to admit I might have solved my problem. I agree with you that chatter is always happening but lately I have found my wireless laptop more sluggish over the internet.

Tonight I happened to notice that I had not re-secured my wireless router the last time I reset it. I have an MN-700. I was broadcasting the SSID, didn’t have MAC addressing enabled, and was not encrypted.

I happened to notice this when I went to reset the base station connection to my ISP DSL modem. While doing so I noticed that 2 other IPs had DHCP leases. I do not recognize KTLL or pwned (see attached image).

I have added all my security which included WEP 128, MAC addressing, stopped broadcasting my SSID and I changed my base station password.
I tried various ipconfig options to clear the DNS cache but nothing seems to remove them from the DHCP list shown on the base station.


Do these leases need to expire? Originally they were set to expire every 2 weeks but I have since changed this to 15 minutes (the least I could do to see if that would clear them – it did not).

Should I be concerned ?

b

[lunarlander]

The DNS cache has nothing to do with DHCP. It only serves to remember that google.com is at ip address 74.125.45.100.

If your router has WPA2 then use that instead of WEP. WEP can be cracked VERY easily in less than 15 mins.

If you router only supports WEP, I suggest spending some money to get a new one.

MAC address allow lists only deters beginners, as all the legit MAC addressees can be sniffed from the air as you use your PC.

[bschwarz]

I will change my router settings to use WPA (not sure if it supports WPA2).

I should have realized that DNS is the link betweeen domain name and IP. Obviousy clearing the DNS cache won't impact DHCP assignments but how do I acquire back DHCP leases? Or do I just have to wait for them to time out and then they'll disappear from the list of DHCP leases currently granted (see image attached previously) - assuming I've protected my wireless network sufficiently

b