IGMP.MCAST.NET

[Multibooter]

I guess this topic belongs more into the WinXP subforum, but it may possibly show an advantage of Win98 over WinXP.

Just after startup WinXP tries to call out twice and is blocked by my Tiny Personal Firewall, with the msg: "tcpip kernel driver wants to contact IGMP.MCAST.NET (224.0.0.22)" There is no such call-out attempt under Win9x. Does somebody know more about this call-out attempt?

I assume that one purpose of this calling-out is to synchronize the internal computer clock. But could it be that this calling-out also sets a flag that there is a functioning internet connection, so that some stuff in WinXP may later on call out/communicate?

If so, this could be another reason for using Win98 for the Internet.

Edited October 21, 2008 by Multibooter

[the xt guy]

While my comment doesn't reply specifically to your problem, I posted a question (and eventually figured out the answer) over in the Win 2K forum about a problem I had that was similar.

Several months ago, I updated my Win2K box with the month's critical fixes. After I rebooted, I suddenly had something that "wanted to get out" at every reboot. Zone Alarm was popping up with the request.

I have a hardware router/firewall, but keep ZA on the computer to help block any suspicious outgoing requests.

I'd never had this problem before and have never had a virus/spyware/trojan on this computer. It was brand new after rebooting from the just applied Microsoft updates.

I finally let the request go through and checked my router logs. Seems it was a request to contact 'stats.microsoft.com'! I've never had this show up in my router logs before, apparently it was something that microsoft added along with the latest security update!

How generous of them! Everytime I now booted up, a little spyware packet of info would be sent to M$! If it wasn't for Zone Alarm I wouldn't even know about it.

There's a reason that the so-called firewall included with XP2 doesn't block anything outgoing! Can you guess as to what it might be?

At any rate, googling on the 'net for info about stats.microsoft.com, I found somebody's M$ 'sh1tlist' of several hundred microsoft sites that could be added to a hosts file and block one's computer from secretive and unwanted packets being sent!

I added all the sites to the hosts file I was already using with Win 98 (no reason whatsoever for a Win 98 box to have to contact Microsoft anymore!)! I removed about three sites from the list so I could still access Windows Update for my Win 2K box.

After I added the sites to my hosts file, the requests stopped!

Interestingly, M$ modified the dns in XP2 so any Microsoft sites added to the hosts file would be ignored! Therefore, this trick won't work if one is using XP2 or higher! God forbid that somebody would attempt to stop these spyware-like communications to M$.

To borrow an expression from Seinfeld, I can now tell Microsoft: No stats for you!

I've never had any of my Win 98 boxes trying to pull any "funny stuff" on the Internet, ever!. All this is just more evidence why Win 98 can actually be a safer and smarter choice on the Internet than XP.

(BTW, i did some searching on the Internet concerning IGMP.MCAST.NET and it seems to be nothing to worry about. It has to do with multicast requests being sent over the network. All the threads seem to say that it's not spyware or something worse.)

Edited October 21, 2008 by the xt guy