Viasat Satellite → [WildBlue] Upload usage is ridiculously high - how can I stop th

Netlimiter should show you in real time what programs are downloading or uploading, and let you set any limits you want - though you may need to pro trial to do that.

"Write bytes" is the amount of data that has been written in write operations initiated by the process since it began running. It can be sent to many places including the network adapter for uploading or to your computer display.

What do the Task Manager memory columns mean?

For comparison my Firefox browser running under Windows 7 is showing:

I/O Read bytes: 20,514,959
I/O Write bytes: 50,919.014
Netstat Received bytes: 342603356
Netstat Sent bytes: 21014563
NetWorx received: 249 MB
NetWorx sent: 15.9 MB

This data is normal for browsing or downloading on a single computer connected to a Wildblue modem. The data reported by Networx is the amount of data received and sent on my Internet since I last started my computer.

Is your laptop computer connected directly to your Exede modem through an Ethernet cable?

Or is your laptop computer connected to your router (by cable or wireless?) and your router connected to your Exede modem by Ethernet cable?

I thought the amount of uploaded and downloaded data on Exede's DAP meter is combined into a single number. If they are separate, how much data does your Exede DAP meter indicate for download?

What does bitmeter report for your separate upload and download usage?

Recently, I would have said that they are wrong and you are right, but now I realize that malware really does cause high upload usage. Not only that, but even the best, modern malware detector software is not able to detect the latest threats. The upload consists of thousands of emails being sent to hundreds of thousands of victims throughout the internet. The malware is controlled by spam botnets which instruct your computer to spam the world without you even knowing what is going on.

Best thing you can do is get the malware detectors and also get something called Spybot Search and Destroy. It uses clever tricks to fool the malware.

The other thing to check is that your wireless and router passwords are not guessable. Make them two different 14-character words and write them down. Your wireless and/or router should be able to tell you your upload usage as well.

Also, make sure your email account a 14-character word, too, because the one thing that most of the botnet malware does is to use your email account to send the spam (and delete it from your "Sent" folders) so you won't even know it's happening.

I agree with aegrotatio, I got a keylogger program (a program that records each of your keystrokes and sends it to the person that initiated the program) from a link on Facebook once and unknown to me it had hijacked the password to one of my email adress's and the password to one of my accounts on a game the next day. Luckily those were the only 2 passwords I had typed before the game I played told me a wrong IP address had tryed to access my account.

I checked the usage meter on Hughesnet and sure enough, my usage had skyrocketed so I changed the password on the email address I had been to and the game account and the usage immediatly stopped. I then ran every program I could find and never caught the actual keylogger program and eventually wound up dumping windows, reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling windows to get rid of it.

There are some powerfull antivirus and malware programs out there but once in a while there is a program that just slips under the radar or is written so you can't install anything to get rid of it period and in these cases the the only answer is the extreme one and thats to reload windows. I hope you don't have to go this far. If you do, make double certain you havn't used your backup since this usage started happening before using it to restore your files after you reinstall windows or you could be right back to square one. Kapersky, spybot search and destroy, adaware and malwarebytes are probably the most effective malware and virus scanners out there and if they don't find anything then you are probably doomed to a format and reinstall. I wish you luck.

Spybot is still pretty good.

Exede's meter has a history of being off, just because they say it's fixed doesn't mean it's fixed for everyone everywhere. With the rollout and customer service being what it is, I'd say that it's a possible culprit. But as I said before, something hidden is possible as well. Combofix is another tool that works well, but it's one of the last resorts. It's worked often for me in the neighborhood, but I've seen a system become unusable after it's use, depending what it is.

Before doing anything drastic, if there was any way you could get by with a known clean system, or possibly run a Linux livecd or liveusb, you could watch the usage and know whether or not it is one of your systems. If you have a router, I would disconnect it for now, even if you are changing passwords on it, and use only a direct cable for testing purposes.

About 6 years ago one of my neighbors had a similar problem on dialup, the only thing is I found and fixed it (don't remember which I used or what it was). Every time the computer was idle, it was emailing out copies of itself. This went on for a few weeks, and they didn't notice it was going on. They said the internet was a little slow, but when they used the phone, it would disconnect right away, etc. I figured up data usage with all the attachments (the sent messages were saved), it was over 2GB.

Just wondering if you have any of your broadband connected to a satellite tv system, such as DirecTVs whole home dvr system? I know, once upon a time, when we used to have the old WildBlue, we got DirecTV and the installer connected the DECA to our internet connection and our usage tripled... we didn't even need that.

Otherwise, sounds like a software bug is draining your bandwidth.

No internet attached to the TV -- the tech gave us the USB adapter and it is not currently installed.

After monitoring my usage through Bitmeter for the last week, it appears as though whenever my computer is on, it is constantly uploading a small amount -- 945 kb an hour, 750 kb an hour, 1045 kb an hour, and so on for any time my computer is tuned on. Even in sleep mode, it is still uploading small amount each hour.

That's not much, but since it is constant, it adds up to ~20MB a day uploading when nothing is happening. That doesn't explain all of my high uploading, but it certainly accounts for some of it -- and it's just disconcerting to see.

I've run every spyware and malware I can find, including every one that was recommended in the previous posts. I also had a friend plus her laptop directly into my router, and after installing bitmeter I saw that she too was uploading data constantly -- so it's not just my laptop.

I've been told that this is typical, and that programs often upload bits of data regularly, and Windows is always taking data. Does ~20MB a day of uploading when the computer is NOT active sound reasonable, or could this be the root of my issue?

Thanks,
Sara