Fully disabling automatic update - stopping background traffic

Hi,

I'm using a GPRS connection to the internet so want to completly stop all
'background' traffic (so I don't have to pay for it!). I have stopped all
virus updates, stopped automatic updates in the XP GUIs and also disabled the
Automatic Update service in the 'Services' GUI.

However, with no browsing activity, I still see background traffic of a few
KB/sec. A netstat -b shows me a TCP connection to an IP address that hits the
windows update site when I put in in a browser. The executable (not
surprisingly) is svchost.exe.

Anyone got any ideas on how I get get this 'background' traffic stopped.

Thanks,
Sandra

Sorry, I don't see the relevance to having posted your inquiry
to the Windows Update newsgroup. Try reposting to
the experts in the Wireless Networking newsgroup:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsof...rking.wireless

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/secu...xp/choose.mspx

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"SH" wrote:


| Hi,
|
| I'm using a GPRS connection to the internet so want to completly stop all
| 'background' traffic (so I don't have to pay for it!). I have stopped all
| virus updates, stopped automatic updates in the XP GUIs and also disabled the
| Automatic Update service in the 'Services' GUI.
|
| However, with no browsing activity, I still see background traffic of a few
| KB/sec. A netstat -b shows me a TCP connection to an IP address that hits the
| windows update site when I put in in a browser. The executable (not
| surprisingly) is svchost.exe.
|
| Anyone got any ideas on how I get get this 'background' traffic stopped.
|
| Thanks,
| Sandra

"SH" <> wrote in message
news:52D6C500-B2C5-448F-A6CD-...
> Hi,
>
> I'm using a GPRS connection to the internet so want to completly stop all
> 'background' traffic (so I don't have to pay for it!). I have stopped all
> virus updates, stopped automatic updates in the XP GUIs and also disabled the
> Automatic Update service in the 'Services' GUI.
>
> However, with no browsing activity, I still see background traffic of a few
> KB/sec. A netstat -b shows me a TCP connection to an IP address that hits the
> windows update site when I put in in a browser. The executable (not
> surprisingly) is svchost.exe.
>
> Anyone got any ideas on how I get get this 'background' traffic stopped.


Yes. But here's how you could have figured it out for yourself.

Use tasklist or Process Explorer (from SysInternals) to find
the list of services associated with that svchost.exe (e.g. by PID)

In there you would probably see wuauserv listed.

You can probably guess what that is and may feel comfortable
just stopping it with a
net stop wuauserv
but for completeness you could instead use the sc command

<example>
>sc GetDisplayName wuauserv
[SC] GetServiceDisplayName SUCCESS Name = Automatic Updates
</example>

So then you could Run... services.msc (e.g.) and find that service
and stop it.

A side benefit of finding it in the Services applet is that you could
also set its Startup type to Disabled (e.g. in case it starts up again
after a boot and you don't want to have to reissue these commands
each time.) BTW note that if you ever *want* to visit WU you will
have to temporarily restart this service. So perhaps you could change
that setting to Manual but I'm not sure if that would completely prevent
it from being started automatically after a boot or not. Try it?


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle
---


>
> Thanks,
> Sandra