Hourglass and Internet connection

[Fed]

You need to find out what program or malware is trying to access the internet, Hijackthis will show you the likely suspects.

Zonealarm is convoluted bloatware... end of story.
Get Sygate and it will also tell you what tries to access the internet.
http://www.comcen.com.au/~fed/sygate.zip

Do not update this version as later versions of Sygate were buggy and Symantec have since bought out Sygate so it will either be disolved, absorbed or turned into bloatware like Zonealarm.

Switch off the XP firewall.

NB:I've heard some good things about Komodo(?) firewall but I haven't tried it yet.

[adrenoreceptor]

Hey all,

Thanks for all the help. The thing that seemed to help the most was the Zone-alarm as it helped me see what was trying to access the Internet. I was able to clean up a lot of stuff and get the hourglass to stop. Still not sure what did it!

I know I still have some garbage floating around on my machine but I'm functional now and the hourglass isn’t ticking me off so I'm just pressing forward.

Much of this is a bit over my head and it's very upsetting that one cant just by a clean machine off the shelf. Cars, computers, tractors, DVD players, etc should simply work without the consumer becoming an expert in all the detailed functions of the machine...for some reason computer makers refuse to make machines that simply work without a bunch of extra garbage and security holes throughout. Perhaps they are incapable of doing so.

They should be called computer manufacturer "practices" much like the medical and legal professions.


Thanks again!