Arbitrarily opened ports

Hello, all. I have just registered today becasue I need your help, but have used the forums for the last six moths or so. I had the dreaded about:Blank problem, and I am eternally greatful for all the helpful posts in the forums!

I am just discovering bittorrent (a little behind the curve, I guess), and was opening a port in my router to get around the NAT. The forum I was following (not a majorgeeks forum) suggested opening one port through both the router and the Windows firewall. So, I was in the network config window, adding a new open port, and found a bunch of open ports with nomeaningful descriptions. Each one was named "msmsgs [port number] [tcp/udp]" (msmsgs 9511 TCP, for example). In total, there are 17 of these randomly open ports. I referred to a couple of websites with registered port assignments and trojan ports (http://www.simovits.com/trojans/trojans.html and http://ports.tantalo.net/) and didn't see anything listed for them. Does anyone recognize these? They look very suspicious, but I have no idea what to do about them. Thanks for your help!

Here's the relevent system data:

Window XP Pro (without SP2, I'm afraid)
PIII 600
256 MB RAM
20GB Hard drive
(I'm getting kind of depressed, noticing that my little clunker is getting a bit out of date)
I connect to a cable modem through a 10/100 network card and a router

Thanks again for any help you can provide!

Steve!

 

If any port you didn't open is set to open, write down the setings and then close it. If any programs you use no longer work then reopen those ports.