System dialing during login

Since early April my computer has started doing something strange and scary. It starts dialing just after I login.

I have run AdAware and SpyBot Ssearch & Destory and virus scan by Nortin AntiVirus with no anomolies found.

However, I do have Nortin Internet Services 2003 with the Firewall and look to see what wants to connect to the Internet just after I login.

It is definitiely Norton Internet Services (NIS) and it is the process ccPxySvc.exe that appears to be the culprit.

Symantec suggested that I uninstall and clean NIS and Norton Anti-Virus then reinstall in a clean boot of the system (Win98). This I did and the problem went away for a while but then came back. I then used Norton Firewall logs to identify what it is that wants to connect and it shows ccPxySvc is doing it! I temporarily disabled ccPxySvc (using Startup.cpl) and the problem goes away and once I re-enable it the problem reoccurs.

I've just sent all this back to Symantec and am awaiting a reply. I would be interested if you know of a solution or what ccPxySvc (another Norton program!) is supposed to do.

It does seem that I am not alone in this problem and found another forum (an almost replica of this one - scary too!) where another user has this problem but was unable to resolve it. What's more I've used Norton's Firewall to finger their own product!

 

As it says "E-mail proxy service" you can disable it and run it only when you need to go online (or only to check your mail). I've been doing this with the (I guess) same thing, only it was called poproxy.exe before. Try and see if it works for you.

 

I did as you suggest and temporarily disabled this program (ccPxySvc) only from starting up when I login but leaving all other processes/programs unchanged and no connection is attempted. However, once the program is re-enabled a
connection is attempted occurs just after I login. I haven't attempted to use the Firewall to block Internet communications by ccPxySvc but it is a possibility to be considered.

I suppose now I need a means of starting ccPxySvc just before starting my e-mail client and terminating it when the e-mail client terminates.

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I did have a response from Symantec (see below) but they have picked on "TCP non-syn/non-ack packet on invalid connection. Packet has been dropped" in the Firewall log which has nothing whatsoever to do with the problem. Symantec gave me a dead link reference to this message.

Symantec response:

"...this message indicates that NIS detected an incoming communication that does not include required information to make it valid. Invalid communications are usually caused by corruption of the information before it reached your computer, such as through telephone lines that have a lot of interference. Or, the communication is from a hacker or a spy ware program. For more detailed information concerning the incident that you have mentioned in your message, please visit the following link to our website..."

Part of my response back included:

"...I don't believe that this is the cause since a) I am not connected to the Internet at the point just after login when ccPxySvc tries to connect and b) the Firewall log indicates ccPxySvc is establishing the connection. I hope you not suggesting that incomplete communication packets to my computer cause it to attempt to connect to the Internet the next time I login - isn't the purpose of the Firewall designed to prevent such communication attempts and spurious Internet connections? Also note I am using DSL rather than a standard 56K modem to "dial-up" to the Internet - I'm not sure that phone
line interference that you refer to can occur in this situation..."

I'll wait with anticipation from Symantec if they ever get to grips with the problem.

 

Maxwell,, I bought my first Norton's product many years ago. It was Norton's Commander, for Dos 3.0. I loved it. I used Norton's for many years, through the first windows,, clear up to Norton's Systemworks 2000, with 98 SE.
I installed that, and it flat took over my OS. It screwed up things that it had NO business even messing with,, and when I finally got tired enough of it to uninstall it,, it got mad at me and did things that took weeks to straighten out. I finally did an Fdisk/format/reinstall.
I'm sure that in most cases, the programs it comes with help,, but not every setup is the same,, and IMHO, Norton's tends to take the "one size fits all" approach, and do what it is going to do regardless.

I won't use any of it's programs again.

Damn shame too,, I loved Speed Disk.