!Need help closing ports!

theREALtrinder

Hey,
my internet has been very slow recently, eircom have told me its to do with the amount of ports open on my computer.

i dont no anything about ports other than ur not supposed to have more than 15 open (thats wat eircom say anyway)

my laptop has over a hundred tcp and udp ports open alltogether.

iv deleted any file sharing programs and also a trojan which i found in a skan.

my firewall is on and running normally

does anyone no how to close these ports or where they are coming from??

using vista btw.

jimoc

Eircom say a lot of things that don't make a lot of sense

Depending on what software you have running on your PC, ports can be open for a lot of reasons, software communicating between various parts of itself etc, this in itself won't cause your internet connection to slow down, unless they are all communicating over the internet.

Check out
http://www.petri.co.il/quickly_find_local_open_ports.htm
it shows some very easy ways to find out what is running and what is causing all the ports to be open.

If there is software running and opening the ports then that will show up on the list.

edit:
also check out http://www.petri.co.il/quickly_find_local_open_ports_gui.htm
The active ports program at the bottom of the list shows you the programs that are using the ports.