I went and deleted all my rules on my firewall, and slowly went about allowing access. It seems the burst of stuff comes from IE. When I accessed IE to download firefox, the in side jumped up by alot. but now I'm using firefox, and the in side is acting normal again. If I stop using IE, will that be enough, or can I get future problems? And could IE be the problem?

I did the repair thing, and it didn't say if I had any problems or not.

Also, as an aside, as a very new person to this sort of things, are the tutorial pages we have listed a good place to start learning about protecting my comp, or is there somewhere better to start from. And I mean start from, as I have extremely basic knowledge of computers and security.

Thanks for the advice and help, I really appreciate it!