Hello everyone

 

I use dial-up (Freeserve) access.  For the last month or two now, when I make the initial dial-up connection, my PC immediately uploads around 10 to 12K of data before allowing me to download anything.  I can see this is going on by clicking the icon in the taskbar to show the dial-up networking status dialog with its bytes Send and Received columns.  Freeserve times out after 2 hours so I have to reconnect.  This upload process occurs each time.

 

I don't know what is causing this, what the data is or where it is going.  It is as if my machine is registering itself on some hacker's network as being online and available for abuse!  This process takes around 30 to 45 seconds and only then will data start flowing on the "Received" side. The first 10K of data is uploaded in seconds and then there is a pause before the last 1 or 2 K is uploaded.  Perhaps my machine is waiting for acknowledgement from the hackers machine.

 

No sure if this was relevant, but I tried the Netsky and Mydoom removal tools from Semantic but they came up all clear.  I can't see any obvious alien processes in the Task manager.  I am worried that my machine has become one of these "zombie" machines.

 

Anyone advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Thanks, but it didn't work.

I downloaded Spybot 1.3 and ran the update download and then ran the program.

It checked for over 1500 bots and found 1 "Alexa" file and 5 "DSO Exploits".  I clicked fix for these and it marked them as fixed.

Unfortunately the mystery upload still remains.

By the way I am using XP and IE6.  I notice in Task manager's process tab that I have four occurences of "svchost.exe" running.  Is this normal.