Something is opening over 100 ports on my laptop

D Hayes

Hi there, I am having problems connecting to my new Eircom broadband account. I got onto their customer support and they said that the reason I'm getting intermittent internet access is because my laptop is opening over 100 ports when it is connecting. They suggested that this is a virus at work.

I have SpyBot Search and Destroy, which I run regularly. This doesn't seem to be picking up anything strange.

The only thing I can think of is that I'm using Vuze for file-sharing. I'm guessing that this could be the root of my problem.

Any idea what could be causing this? Also, it there a way that I can see which ports are open on my laptop?

Cheers.

biko

You could try uninstalling Vuze or killing its process in Task Manager.
Then try again.

D Hayes

Thanks Biko, will check that. I'm at work now so will test on my laptop later. I stumbled upon a tool called Shields Up, which checks your computer for vulnerabilities in your firewall:

http://lifehacker.com/5511734/shieldsup-tests-your-firewall-for-vulnerabilities

Might give that a try also.

ressem

What operating system are you using?

Start-Run
cmd
netstat -ba
will record the open listening ports at a point in time.

In Vista and 7 ctrl-alt-del, bring up task manager.
Under performance, there is resource monitor, which can list network connections.

Or in most microsoft operating systems you can download and use Sysinternals Process Monitor from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx, and click the icons on the right of the menu to select and display only network activity and associated processes.

D Hayes

ressem wrote: »

What operating system are you using?

Start-Run
cmd
netstat -ba
will record the open listening ports at a point in time.

In Vista and 7 ctrl-alt-del, bring up task manager.
Under performance, there is resource monitor, which can list network connections.

Or in most microsoft operating systems you can download and use Sysinternals Process Monitor from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx, and click the icons on the right of the menu to select and display only network activity and associated processes.

Hi ressem, thanks for the info. I'm running Vista. I'll run those checks later this evening and post anything out of the ordinary.

CrinkElite

Vuse is an absolute PIG.

A flat mate of mine was using it in our place last summer. whenever it was active our 20 meg line would grind to a halt.

We received a warning from NTL at the end of the month informing us that we had exceeded our 250GB limit.
She stopped using it and we've never even come close to the limit since.
There may be some way to curtail Vuse's apatite but I couldn't find it.

Setting the upload/download limit did not free up more bandwidth.
Vuse seems to run some service (it's supposed to support P2P streaming) which creates a HUGE amount of overhead on the network.

I would suggest you install Utorrent. It's light weight, reliable and it really gets the job done with the minimum fuss. http://www.utorrent.com/

Don't forget to protect yourself. http://www.peerblock.com/