Starting yesterday my desktop is constantly downloading. The speed ranges from 30-70kB/s, which isn't too bad; but it adds up quickly (about 3GB so far). I haven't installed anything new recently to cause it either. Another odd thing is that the computer is using more RAM than usual; normally at start up it uses about 900MB, now it's using 1400MB. So far I've checked with Malwarebytes, Spybot, Ad-Aware, and Microsoft Security Essentials and none of them have turned up anything. I also looked at my usage using WinDirStat and can't find where the files are being saved to. Looking at the processes and services that are running I don't see anything that sticks out either. Any ideas? P.S. I'm using Windows 7 Professional 64 bit with the parts in my sig.
Heummm... very interesting... Lucky for you, Windows 7 (and Vista) has a full monitoring system. Start > type: Monitor > Open: Resource Monitor. Go under the Network tab. So it's very simple, anything that uses the network will appear on the list: > Having 2 or 3x svchost.exe is fine and expected (because it depends on what is going on with the system, and these are Windows stuff). > When you close one the processes, the list in the resource monitor, won't shrink down. The process will just no 0 B/sec for send and receive. You need to restart the panel to have the list cleared. Potential things that uses the interwebs: - IM program - Steam service - web browser (even if you don't browse, you might have it check for updates or add-ons uses the net)
Under the "Network Activity" tab the things using the most bandwidth are "spoolsv.exe" going to the network printer, even though I don't have anything in the queue, and "svchost.exe (LocalServiceAndNoImpersonation)" going to IP 239.255.255.250. But even combined those use less than 10kB/s while I'm downloading at 61kB/s. Since it's writing to my hard drive I took a look at that as well, it's writing to a few places but none stick out: NTFS Volume Log, page file, NTFS MFT, windows sidebar, System32\config, and Local\lastalive1.dat EDIT: I don't have Steam or any IM programs running, but I did just see something in the "Disk" section that adds up to my amount. There were 3 different files being written to in the Prefetch folder that added up to about the right amount.
Everything looks fine to me. How do you know you are downloading 61kB/s. Is that what Windows Resource monitor give you? or your ISP? or some other program?
I'm using the sidebar app Network Meter by Addgadget most of the time, but when I go to the networking portion of the task manager it confirms that I'm using my bandwidth on something (.05% network utilization, which works out to about 60kB/s). Yet the resource monitor doesn't show anything at all.
Ok well don't use the internet for a full day and look what you ISP says. I believe all you are seeing is just computers and your printer on your network connecting themselves to see which exist. To confirm everything, unplug yourself from the net. Wait 10min, see if you still consume that 60kB/s. If anything tries to connect the ot web, it won't be able to send anything, so connection will fail, and the network status will drop.
Looks like I found out what the issue was. One of the printers on the network kept rebooting, once I got that back in order the downloads stopped. Thanks for the help GoodBytes and lysol, +rep to both of you.
For future reference, Netbalancer is awesome for this kind of issue. Not only can you see exactly what is downloading/uploading, you can throttle or completely stop whatever process you choose.
