When I get paranoid or suspect weirdness, I just disable the internet connection either with software or, if I'm really freaked, hardware.  Then a reboot and some spying with some tools to see what's running (including loaded DLLs). I've never found anything remarkable.

You could always fire up an old Pentium, insert it in the loop and get the free firewall from Astaro.  That fine software has more protection than a quart of penicillin and a gross of prophys.  If I'm not mistaken, it will also packet capture and interpret.

I used to run Tiny Personal Firewall (version 2, the old freeware version) on my XP box, just to see what my incoming and outgoing connections were doing.  I never saw it open up any ports that were suspicious to me (or nothing I couldn't explain, at any rate).  For instance, I'd start Eudora, and it would ask me if I wanted to allow the standard POP3 ports when it connected to check mail.  Open each browser, and I would have to OK the use of ports 80 and 8080 for each one. 

The one thing I did find were those naughty applications that kept phoning home for updates or who knows what else, and those were promptly uninstalled or, if I really needed them, I would tell TPF to disallow the connection.  If I ever doubted anything, I'd go in and kill all of the rules in TPF and start over from scratch--then it would ask me again, for each connection, whether I'd allow it or not.

That's what bugs me about the WinXP firewall, and many others: they only monitor incoming, not outgoing, traffic.  TPF was small (OK, tiny ), and ran unobtrusively.  Still have it loaded on my 'puter but don't run it all the time.

Just my two cents, and you know what that'll buy you these days...

I just popped up the Command Prompt and did a netstat -noa and there's port 1026 still open and listening for something. If I try to block it with my firewall, port 1027 instantly opens and if I block 1027, 1028 instantly opens and starts listening.

I could do this all day.

So much for my firewall protecting me!

Quoting user999: I can't even use a firewall to block ports Micro$oft insists I must have open.

I've got them all blocked on my router.

Quoting user999: I can't even use a firewall to block ports Micro$oft insists I must have open.

I've got them all blocked on my router.

I've used several brands and types of router and they were all either too much trouble for what I do online or they 'seemed', rightly or wrongly, to be slowing my cable connection. I even replaced and edited the Linux-based operating system on a Linksys router to get more control.

Are you sure you're blocking incoming and outgoing on the first dynamically assigned port (1025 or up)? I actually did totally close it down once and of course, XP refused to communicate on the Internet until I opened it again.

I know you didn't block svchost because then you would have lost all sorts of access. Right now on my machine svchost has open ports: 123, 135, 1025, 1029, 1115, 1124 and 1374. I dunno what they're doing exactly.

You can totally block ntoskrnl but it still transmits and receives packets on ports: 445, 137, 138 and 139.

Did you ever wonder, if ports 80, 110 and 25 are 'authorized to transmit/receive data' (i.e. open) because they're used for browsers and email, if anything else could be sent or received via those ports?

Are you sure your router wasn't preset to make sure it functions with Micro$oft products, right out of the box? Think about what that might mean.

When Micro$oft controls my computer, I don't trust anything and I do question everything. It's entirely possible I'm just paranoid and everything is A-OK but I'm not ever going to bet on it.

Are you sure you're blocking incoming and outgoing on the first dynamically assigned port (1025 or up)?

Absolutely sure. I've tested it, both from within my own network and from another computer on the outside. Only the ports I want open are open (basically, for my Web and e-mail servers). The rest are shut tighter than a nun's **** (as our Australian bretheren are reputed to say). The router is a Belkin, BTW.

The rest are shut tighter than a nun's **** (as our Australian bretheren are reputed to say).

Canadian brethren occasionally say the same thing - but never Catholics.

Windows Update just asked me if I wanted to install Service Pack 3 for XP on my computer and I said I did but then it didn't install.  It just sat there at 0% for several minutes and then the little update icon on my computer vanished.  Since then, I haven't been able to get the install option back on my screen. Has anyone else on Cage Match installed it yet?   

Since the "wonderful SP3 roll-out date" has come and gone, I've received no update requests from MS for XP SP3.  I always dread that little shield icon popping up, it's just another roll of the dice after I back up the entire HDD.

Has anyone used an XP backup program called "Back On Track?"  I've tried it, beat up XP with some nasty reg changes and dll deletes, did a hard reset and pressed F7.  Voila, the whole 'chine was back, just the way I left it.

Windows Update just asked me if I wanted to install Service Pack 3 for XP on my computer and I said I did but then it didn't install.  It just sat there at 0% for several minutes and then the little update icon on my computer vanished.  Since then, I haven't been able to get the install option back on my screen. Has anyone else on Cage Match installed it yet?   

Sorry. I've only booted to the Ubuntu Linux half of my hard disk since I installed 8.04 LTS. XP is still there on the other half but even if I did boot to Windoze, I disabled all Internet access and stopped absolutely everything it was possible to stop from loading into RAM if/when I boot into it, including M$ updates, the anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit and on and on and on...

It works out well. I use Linux for the Internet, music, videos, word processing, spreadsheets etcetera and XP strictly for games and apps like Paint Shop Pro, which I happen to like just a little bit better than The GIMP, probably because I'm more familiar with it.

Since I can now read and write the XP NTFS partition from inside Linux, it could be a very long time before I get the urge to play a game and boot to M$ again.

I predict it will be a long time before I take advantage of the XP SP3 upgrade. Rightly or wrongly, I just  don't trust Micro$oft.

Will XP SP3 Keep Vista At Bay?

Will XP SP3 Keep Vista At Bay?

Considering that on the corp n/w front, XP SP2 has already kept it at bay.  It's safe to say SP3 will continue the trend.

I hope it's NOT the year of the Linux Desktop! I have enough trouble, keeping Windoze machines operating for family, friends and acquaintances. The last thing I need is a bunch of amateurs running Linux, who don't even know Windoze has a Command Prompt, a firewall, Services running in the background etcetera. I can just hear it now: "Why won't my new game run??? It always ran on Windows!!!!"

By the way, Hop. Thanks for coming up with an excellent excuse for me to attach this new smiley I just found in the wild:

I guess I'm an OS "agnostic": I could care less what OS I use, as long as my work gets done at the end of the day.  With the amount of software I have for XP, there's no way I'll ever be able to switch; all the other equivalents just fall short in so many ways, I'd give up a lot of functionality.  If every software company started porting stuff over to *nix, sure, I'd consider it.  Until then, nothing's going to change here.  I've gone for weeks w/o rebooting XP, and I never get any exploits (knock on silicon), so for me, it does its job.