Are these programs part of Windows?

[ssbgsr]

"A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing"
My firewall (Zone Alarm) informs me that the programs
below are trying to access the internet. Are they part of
Windows 98 SE?

Thanks in advance

Distributed COM Services
Lexpps.exe
News Engine Update application

Ok - I figured out that Lexpps and Distributed COM services are part of Windows. They live in the systems folder.

I bet News Engine Update is for automaticly finding new topics etc in my list of newsgroups - a function of Outlook. I'm not using Outlook for that.

[FlyingPenguin]

You should be able to block Distributed COM services with no problem as long as you don't have a program running that's using it. It's part of DCOM, and the type of program that would use it would involve one that's communicating with another computer, so I would suspect it's Adware.

I'd download Adaware and clean out your system: http://www.lavasoft.nu/

If you don't know what it is, block it. The things you're likely to detect are Adware, registration and update checkers. I don't want any of my apps registering themselves or checking for updates - I prefer to do it myself.

Almost ANYTHING you install now installs a background update checker.

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EDIT - a bit of research on Google newsgroups came up with this:

LEXPPS.EXE is a file associated with a Lexmark printer. It uses DCOM to fire up a server to listen on two ports - something to do with network printing. However it's also a security loophole.

Apparently you can block it without any problems. Some people have even resorted to hacking the drivers to remove it: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=lexpp ... p04&rnum=1