Why Does XP Auto-Connect to sa.windows.com?

termigator asks: "I have a private home network that has a Windows XP system on it (I know, the horrors, but it allows my wife to do some of her work at home). With recent discussions about DRM and the Microsoft EULA (which allows Microsoft to autodownload software), I decided to block all traffic on my Linux firewall from Microsoft systems (207.46.0.0/16) to the Windows XP box. This morning there was trapped traffic from Microsoft, after my wife was doing some work on the XP system the day before. I talked with my wife, and I could not determine what she could have done to cause the traffic to happen. Can anybody provide some insight?" Why can't Microsoft be up front about when it tries to phone home? Of course, phoning home isn't the big problem with most people, it's the fact that they try to be sneaky about it for certain tasks. With Microsoft pushing XP into the home, consumers should definitely be wary about storing private information on such systems until Microsoft provides some answers.

"Here is the logwatch summary:

Rejected packets from sa.windows.com (207.46.226.40).
  Port 1053     (tcp,eth0,output): 4 packet(s).
  Port 1054     (tcp,eth0,output): 4 packet(s).
Total of 8 packet(s).

Port 1053 is 'remote-as' and port 1054 is 'brvread'. I am guessing that the remote-as is related to the Remote Assistant feature in XP, but I've had no luck on finding any technical information about brvread via a Google search."

Comments

Re:XP Experiences

[-SpAwN-DI]

This is the kind of post that makes people not want to listen to open source activist or the general slash dotter, if you will. Personally, I use XP/2000 for everthing I do. Is *nix better suited to some of those tasks ?? Yes, BUT .... I make a living supporting Microsoft$ products. I don;t have a lot of free time to learn everthing I would need to implement *nix. A friend of mine runs his business on *nix, mainly slackware and Solaris. Recently, he cam to me and asked me to help set up a windows web server, as a customer had required IIS (no flames about making the customer change, blah blah blah, this is america and the customer is usually right, we want their $$$) So we are setting up the windows server together. The point to all this is that sometimes FUD (if you don't know what this is, figure it out) makes people become beligerant A$$e$. Most people don't want to hear how software wants to be free. Hey, if you want to giva away your work then by all means, DO IT. Do not, however, condemn us true capitalists that believe we should be paid for our work. I personally believe that McDonalds cheesburgers (especially the 1/4 pounder) should be free, so next time I go there, I think I will pester the other customers to try to get McDonalds to giva the world their cheeseburgers. Who thinks this will work? Tired of reading my rant ?? Me too, soooooo :)

XP is terrible.

[sergiori]

A friend of mine had a problem with drives on a windows XP machine, somehow the drivers for the cdrom burner and the dvd rom got corrupted and would conflict with each other.

So at first I thought of downloading the drivers from an ftp or http site, when I finally located the location of the drivers, they were not available for XP, the site had a message saying this drivers come with XP.

But since windows XP was preinstalled, and it had no CD rom available, there was not much that could be done.

Installing the drivers again from the hard disk would just reproduce the problem, and due to the plug and play feature it would automatically install both drivers.

It was imposible to only install the dvd rom, or the cdrom burner alone. It was probably posible by going in the registry, but that is risky and it is probable not a good idea in general.

In general I would say to stay away from XP and use Linux, it is so much more friendly user, and it has no spyware. One you learn how to use Linux you will love it, if someone tells you it is more dificult than windows, it is simply not true.

For linux most of the configuration files are under /etc, the kernel sources in /usr/src/linux

to install a program, it is a single line:
rpm -i program-i386.rpm

Lets say something goes wrong and the GUI is messed up, well you can always use CLI to fix the problem, with windows a reinstall if you have the CD otherwise a call to MS for another license, which is very costy.

In linux it is much easier to edit a file in /etc
or in the home directory for a user, a file that is in plain ascii, readable by any editor, than to have to edit the windows registry wich are badly documented.

Lets say you want to install linux in a computer which already has an OS, well it is not a problem linux can be located on any disk, any partition, and it will not overwrite the boot sectors without asking you whant do you want to do, windows on the other hand will want to be on the first disk, and it will automatically overwrite the boot sectors if you are lucky, if you are not lucky it will overwrite your linux partition destroying all your data. Haven't check reacent versions of windows, but thats how it used to be. Linux never overwrote a windows partition, unless if I really wanted to do that.

Right now I have dual boot so that I can use my scanner, but as soon as I have an scanner that runs under linux, windows is gone for good.

One thing that in Linux is completely different than windows, is that in Linux the GUI is just a GUI, in other words it is very nice, and makes lifes easier, but linux works perfectly well and it is very usable without the GUI, windows has the GUI incorporated into the OS (political reasons in my opinion, to demolish the competition, remenber DR Dos), windows without the GUI is useless, you simply can not use it, if you don't believe try using windows without the GUI for something usefull, not possible.

In Linux you have the choice of using or not using the GUI, it is your choice.
In windows it is M$ choice, not yours.

Some comments by a few here were that windows can do everything linux can, and that is not true.

Linux is true multiuser, windows is not.
Linux can be booted over a network, were the kernel being run is on a remote machine, windows can not do this, and this is very usefull for diskless machines.
in linux for doing a task you have many ways to acomplish the task, in windows you choice is limited.
The bare minimun to run a current kernel (2.4.x) in a terminal is 16 MB, windows can not do that, even if you doble that amount.
I could go on forever, the point is that linux is a lot more powerfull, and windows CAN NOT do everything can do.

In recent times there have been a lot of atacks against linux, and other open source software, like the DMCA, that I believe is a real treat, its intent of destruction, I believe due to the fact that linux is internationation it will not be destroyed, but it can slow down its progress.
And then M$ taking avantage of proprietary technology, can make sure none of its software comply with industry standards, and if reverse engineering is ilegal, like the case with dvd roms, this will be a problem for linux created by politicians.

Now if you consider what you get with a full linux distribution vs windows, it is obvious that with linux you get much more software and of better quality, now in windows to get that type of functionality you would have to add thousands of dollars worth of software.