Few queries - anyone know?

First off excuse my ignorance these questions are simple.

My PC: 1gig Ram, Win XP home, 3Ghz Pentium 4, Norton virus, zonealarm pro....

1. Easy to start - What size is a packet? does it vary? I am trying to sus out incoming/outgoing traffic flow but can only find packet information from my wireless BT Voyager 220.

2. BTYahoo menu seems to have hijacked my IE. Since I didnt add it I am treating it with suspicion and have disabled it. How can I remove it? Adaware/spybot didnt find anything and my freebie shot of TheCleaner has expired.

3. After closing my programs and the PC was idle I noticed incoming traffic was battering away. Zonealarm has 4 icons saying what traffic is but all are used for Win32 services or something like that. How can I determine what the traffic is and where its coming from?

1) Depending on your ISP & MTU settings, I'd expect a packet to be 1500 bytes, this link may be of interest.

2) Sounds like it's just set itself to be your home page. Assuming IE6, Tools > Internet options > General > Homepage.

3) There's a certain amount of 'banter' between the modem/router and the 'net, even if a computer is turned off (in the case of a router). You may want to download something like Netmeter to get an idea of what volume of traffic is going back and forth. Some of it could originate from apps checking for updates, Windows doing a time sync etc. It would certainly be worth checking your machine for malware.

Edit: (a) typo, (b) when your NAV subscription expires, you might like to look at NOD32, which is a far 'lighter' programme when it comes to computer resources and speed of operation.

Edited by deleted (Mon 14-Aug-06 14:51:51)

thanks for the advice Rik...

on point 2, my homepage is still as it previously was, its just the menu system that appeared on the menubar. I disabled it in "manage add-ons" but wanted to clean it off the PC, I just didnt see a delete option.

Isnt spybot / adaware the kind of stuff for "malware"?

Ian.

Haven't seen what you're getting, but there's a utility to 'unbrand' copies of IE, available here, line 8, RH column. Set a restore point before running it, just in case.

Spybot/Adaware are two good programs for malware. Personally, I use Webroot's Spy Sweeper, others prefer PC Tools Spyware Doctor. They should all do an adequate job, but none is perfect, so best to use two or more.