Laptop Using up bandwidth

[Twinbird24]

Hey, my neighbor dropped his laptop off for me to have a look at. He has been going over his monthly 15 GB bandwidth allowance and suspects that something is using bandwidth in the background. This laptop is the only thing on his network using bandwidth and is only used for for things like light web browsing (not a lot of video streaming).

I've scanned with Avast, Malewarebytes, and Superantispyware but found nothing, the computer doesn't seem to be infected. The Modem was checked out by the ISP and was deemed okay.

I've installed NetWorx onto his laptop to monitor his bandwidth usage, so far it's only been 11 days into the month and it's already at 12.8 GB. Any Ideas?

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64x on DELL Inspiron N7110.

Thanks.

 

[Agent Smith]

Have you tried to look at task manager and see if there's something on? A firewall should show what's going out on the net. I would scan with TDSSkiller and Bitdefender live CD. Another scanner is Hitman Pro.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/tdsskiller/

http://download.bitdefender.com/rescue_cd/

http://download.cnet.com/Comodo-Firewall/3000-10435_4-75181464.html?part=dl-&subj=dl&tag=button

 

[Cromewell]

Similar to the above post. You need something to monitor what applications are hitting the web so you can figure out which is the problem. I know netbalancer let's you do it but I'm sure there are lots out there.

 

[Twinbird24]

Thanks for the responses.

I've tried netbalancer but it won't install properly on his laptop. I've used resource monitor (I think that's what it's called) which monitors processes that use the network/ connect to the internet (it's a built in windows program). I found nothing suspicious. I actually removed the process from the list (and also again in msconfig in the boot section) that was using up the most bandwidth (a program related to western digital, didn't seem too important and wasn't a critical windows process) but apparently this didn't help.

I was going to try your suggestions with the maleware scanners and firewall but we've decided to reinstall the OS as there are also other problems with the laptop (printer won't install properly, device manager and other windows show up blank).

So this should fix any software issues, and if he is still having high bandwidth then we can say it's most likely because he just doesn't realize how much he's been downloading lately.