Utility To Identify Download Activity

Guys, This may be a crazy issue, but more than once, I've seen my modem data transfer lights rapidly blinking indicating that something is being downloaded. 90% of the time, I know whats being downloaded because I initiated it. However, every now and then, the lights commence blinking rapidly for several minutes when I'm not doing any downloading. It would be helpful to know, what's being downloaded and it's origin. Perhaps it's a background thing that MS is doing, or some other background update, but I don't know, and I can't see anything in Task manager or on my Firefox browser to indicate an active download. Also, I have a utility that monitors my system parameters, like Ram and CPU occupancy, performance, etc. It's essentially a "gadget" oriented program (called Wise System Monitor). And whenever anything is being downloaded, one of the items it monitors is download and upload speeds. So, aside from the data transfer lights blinking (steadily and rapidly) I see the rate at which data is being sent or received. But I could not determine what it is or where it's coming from. Also, checking the Windows "event logger" really confuses me, so no help there. Anyone have any thoughts? BTW, I'm running Win 7 Pro pm a Dell Optiplex 755.
Thanks, and sorry for the lengthy post.

 

Thanks plodr, good thought! I'll check my MBAM my Avast.

 

Microsoft Process Monitor

Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity.

 

You can use Nirsoft NetworkTrafficView or Wireshark to see network traffic. There are a few things that are always using the network, I don't recall if Win 7 does this, but Win 10 pings a MS site all the time to know whether it is online or not. Which my company blocks so everyone always asks why the network icon always says not connected.

 

OK...plodr, yes, both MBAM and Avast are set to automatically update, and I may have other programs that do the same. Thank for that info. Also foogoo and evilfantasy....thanks for your input! I think the Nirsoft NetworkTrafficView is what I'm looking for. I need to research it a bit, but it appears to do exactly what I want. Thanks!!!