pc tries to connect to isp every few minutes

[alidabiri]

hi folks.
i have a desk top (asus/pent-4-2.66/512-ram/xp-prof) connected via a linksys nic card 10/100 to an ibm thinkpad (pent-m/1.6/768-ram/xp-prof) using a cross over cable. the laptop has a pcmcia nic card (xircom - or something) in addition to wireless lan card and 1394 lan card and another lan card. i had to disable these expcept for the pcmcia nic card which worked witth the old laptop.
the connection between the 2 are working properly. even though there's an exclamation mark on the connection icon in systray.
my question is that, every few minutes, the desk top launches dial-up box to connect to my isp.
can somebody tell me why this is happenning? is there a virus? a spyware that is trying to connect and send collected info?
i have ran several virus/spyware checks. and they all say the machine is clean.
can someone please help?

 

[balzi]

Have you got Windows set to search for updates automatically?
Even Acrobat Reader searches for updates when it's running. Either of these could prompt you PC to try and get an internet connection going..

if you can't find anything specific try telling the Internet connection to NOT connect/dial when no internet connection is present... that might be annoying though, for times when you really want to use it.

Balzi