I am still running Service Pack 1 of XP and use dial-up. Approx 2 minutes after connecting, a message is displayed by the firewall that a second iexplore.exe has requested access to the network but has been blocked. (This comes up even if I'm not connected to the Internet). I also get a lot of messages from the firewall saying it has blocked svchost.exe from accessing the network. When I look at the firewall logs, there are lost of scvhost.exe files, and they have the following properties(?):
EPMAP
COMMPLEX-MAIN
SSDP
EVENT LISTENER
LISTEN
TWSDS
AGRI
NTP
CGMS
EXLM
NTERM

Is there anything to worry about since the firewall is blocking all this?
Is there any way to find out what is causing the second iexplore.exe request? (When I was a programmer years ago, you had debugging tools where you could record what happened as a log file - does XP have anything similar?)
Are any of these svchost.exe files a problem?

Many thanks
Dave

svchost is the generic label for non-specified services. Most XP's run several of these under normal operation.

I quickly googled your list and see mostly firewall / port services ...

As to logs:

Also: look in your Event viewer: rt. click My Computer then click Manage then Event Viewer.
Or: Administrative Tools/Event Viewer or Start/Run/ eventvwr
Open the system as well as the application tabs & look for X errors. Click error line for details.
Post back the source & event id & Description especially of errors that seem to coincide with this issue.
Also check the Information lines that might coincide with this issue.

How to view and manage event logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP

Also view your Error Log via:

[1] Start Menu
[2] Help and Support
[3] Pick a Task
[4] Tools
[5] Advanced System Information
[6] View the Error Log

Look for any synchronous entries.

Also in the event of STOP blue screen errors a .dmp (DUMP) log is created.

You might want to run a HijackThis log by our Pros over in that section:

Please follow the instructions HERE & then post your log in a new thread in the Spyware, Adware, Viruses and HijackThis Logs section.
(Not in this section please).

Please specify what issues you appear to be experiencing along with your log.

Thanks - I'll try all that. I did run adaware last night, having customised it first as suggested. It removed quite a lot, including the drop down list of previously typed URLs in IE. Also, when I now go to a second window, it doesn't display in the drop-down list the sites I just visited in the first window. Any ideas how I can get that functionality back?

Look in your Task Manager (right click an empty area of the Taskbar and click Task Manager > Processes).

See how many versions of iexplorer.exe are running. It sounds like the second window is opening a second instance of IE.

If this is the case I would suggest even stronger that you post a HijackThis log for our pros to review. Such behavior is very common with infections.

There are two settings here that you might try:

Tools > Internet Options > Advanced

1. Reuse windows for launching shortcuts

2. Use inline AutoComplete