ANYONE HELP? Has my computer been infected?

[darrenrichie]

Hi everyone;

I have got windows xp home and i recently put on zone alarm pro as my firewall. I connect to the internet using a usb maodem on broadband.
My concern is that my activity monitor on my task bar is constantly showing activity coming from my computer when i connect to the internet. This shows up on the zone alarm monitor and also the internet connection icon that shows when you connect to the internet.
I understand that this could be activity from some of my start up programs but how can i make sure that i haven't been infected somehow?
I have ad-aware, spybot and mcafee antivirus. Scans don't show anything but i guess that they can be easily hidden.
I have read alot in these forums and would just like some advice on what to do to ensure that i have a clean system.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Bubba]

Hey darren,

Setting a side for a moment the possibility your infected....when you notice the traffice via the "zone alarm monitor"....is the traffic incoming(green)\outgoing(red) or both ?

Also....have you installed XP SP2 ?....and if not....do you have XP set to download any updates if needed ?

[darrenrichie]

Thanks for the reply Bubba;

The traffic is from the red monitor and i do have sp2 installed. I recently did a clean install as well as my computer had a problem were it wouldn't start up properly.

[Bubba]

{QUOTE-> The traffic is from the red monitor <-QUOTE}Hmmm....outgoing then ???

Concerning Zone Alarm Pro(ZAPro)....how do you have your programs set up. Meaning....does everything have to ask before they can access the Internet each and every time ?

If after you re-boot your macine and without attempting to access the Internet....do you then see outgoing action(packets) in respects to ZAPro ?

Also....if when your seeing this outgoing traffic you place ZAPro's Internet lock on....who screams or what does your ZAPro log show in respects to possible programs being blocked Internet access ?

[darrenrichie]

ZA doesn't show any activity when not connected to the internet. Also when i put lock on there doesn't seem to be any alarms or attempts to access. All my programs are configured to ask for permission. All very strange and annoying because i can see activity from my computer going on nearly constantly and I just want to know the source.
There is a strange occurence were Dr Watson Debugging Service seems to be running in the background alot and i haven't seen this before. Could this be anything to do with it?

[Sweetie(*)(*)]

HI, if you open task manager, click on networking while your are connected, look to see if your connection is being used [there is a % of your bandwidth]
If there is then further investigation may help.
As a side note in Zone Alarm-programs list, programs that are accsesing the internet have a green dot beside their name.

[Blackspear]

{QUOTE-> ...I have read alot in these forums and would just like some advice on what to do to ensure that i have a clean system.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. <-QUOTE}
Hi Darren, can you try following the steps found here (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=50662), these are fairly comprehensive and should confirm that your system is clean...

Let us know how you go...

Cheers ;D