Last winter was pretty severe in this area, and when I finally got out to check on it, it was apparent there was some damage to the corner of the house where I keep my office. So, the claims guy came in and while I was waiting to see what the insurance company will cover, I cleared out the office. This includes my main computers.

The process it taking longer than I expected, so I grabbed an old Dell small form factor computer I had laying around and set it up on a card table. It was a fresh install of XP a couple of years ago and rarely used. Since all I needed was email, FT, and a few other things, it should work fine. And it does.

I habitually keep Windows Task Manager open and I view the columns on the network activity just to keep an eye on what's going on. Geeky, I know.

Anyhow, I was watching it and I noticed that there was continuous activity. To be more specific, it showed 4661 bytes/sec coming in, and 5543 bytes going out. Every second. 24 hours a day. Hmmm.

1. I have a RAID server and I map the raid array to a drive, so that everyone always works on the same document. Maybe Windows is pinging it to make sure it's still there? Powered off the server and disconnected the cable. Nope, data still dribbling in.

2. Maybe some other computer on my network is doing something? Only one laptop is on line, and he shows zero network activity. Not him.

3. Maybe it's XP? I have a couple of computers that are dual-booted, so I brought one of them up. No suspicious activity with either XP or Win 7.

4. Disconnected the cable modem so all network activity is in the house. No change. Is the router (Netgear N150) doing something funny? And why just this one computer?

What I should do is install and fire up Wireshark on this machine, but that's a bit of work. What I'm hoping is that someone will say something like, "Oh, that's the fizzwhistle. I thought everyone knew that. Just turn off the di-bip-di-bop and you'll be fine."

What I don't want to hear is something like , "Get a Mac - problem solved".