Task manager tries to connect to the internet Options

[pandy]

Why?

I've used TinyWall for several years, but haven't really looked at all the features. I found it can show all connections it has blocked the last 5 minutes. Taskmgr.exe has been blocked more than a hundred times - in 5 minutes. Why does it try to get out at all? Obviously it doesn't hurt anything that it's blocked, not that I've noticed anyway.

Note, TinyWall isn't a firewall in the usual sense. It sits on top Windows firewall and works by simply blocking all connections except those you OK. So when you first install it there's some fiddling. I think it's great, even if you have to remember to OK all new programs, but that's quickly done. I suppose it can be used as the only FW, but I keep the Windows one running. If anyone wants to try it, please note it doesn't work together with other firewall software, just the Windows one.

This is only the top of the list. You can see it's just 2 or 3 seconds between tries.



I don't know what the System process is about either. I didn't have to OK any system processes when I installed TinyWall, so it must have a built in whitelist.

[Christian J]

BTW, have you checked if Disk Cleanup or similar removes the files?

[pandy]

I'm scared of automatic cleanup. I deleted them manually. Took me until 6 in the morning. My whole body was aching from doing the same few moves for so long. You have no idea how slow it gets with probably more than a million files in a folder! In the beginning I wanted to check the files too. Both in case they were fishy and to be sure they weren't files needed by Windows. Or my own invaluable files that had mysteriously been moved there. But when I realized they were all copies I deleted everything with common extensions, images, PDFs, text files, HTML...

I have just a handful left because I don't know what they are. Probably of no importance, but I'm curious. I had a bunch of .com files. Can't find of any use for that extension other the the old executive. Also very many .iso, small ones, 50 kB or so. I deleted all by mistake, so can't check those further, but I'll look into the .com. And also a bunch without extension, just long numeric file names.

There's also a folder called AppData in there with the subdirectories Local, LocalLow and Roaming. Do you have those? There are what I think are some kind of backup files in there, among others.

I haven't gotten any new files in systemprofile. But I haven't used my email program. I expect them to come when I start it. I can't figure what's doing this, but I think it's a Windows bug. Maybe email stuff is dumped there temporarily but Windows forgets to do cleanup? And what to do about it? I don't want to babysit that folder forever.

Lucky I happened to see I was that low on free space. I was down on 6 GB, I think. Less than what Windows is supposed to require anyway. Had this continued a while I guess a total crash had happened. Now I have 127 GB free. Much better! And I don't need to buy a larger SSD as I thought.