Virtual Machine Network Services?

[Markbnj]

Ok, so any and all of the effects I describe here may be unrelated, if not in fact induced by alcohol or other foreign substances.

I was having some trouble staying connected in a couple of online games. Tonight I took a look at my network connections, and noticed that I have an "Internet Gateway" enabled. I definitely did not have an Internet Gateway Enabled. I am not sharing any connections. All the systems in the house talk to the net through the D-link router/ap.

Everything looks normal in ipconfig /all. So I try to disable it. Says I can't, because it is busy with a connect/disconnect. Reboot. Same thing. Look at status/props. The dialog comes up and then immediately disappears everytime, but I manage to keep it open long enough to see that there are a lot of packets on this connection (it might just be reflecting the packets sent on my underlying LAN connection). Hmm.

I go into properties for my LAN adapter (nVidia nForce 3). I notice that in the protocol stack is "Virtual Machine Network Services." I go hunting around on the web, and all I see is that this is somehow related to "Virtual PC and Virtual Server." I have no idea what these even are, although they at least seem related to Microsoft, and not some guy named Vasily who has a company called "Go2Intarnet" in Lithuania.

So... wtf? Where did this come from? I can just remove it from the protocol stack, and see if it is what is using ICS, but I would like to know what alien being installed this on my system? I haven't done any big installations of software recently.

 

[nweaver]

those are for network support in MS VirtualPC, uncheck the box and you know it's not affecting. The other thing (gateway) might be UPnP thing from your router?

 

[Markbnj]

Ahh, maybe you're right about that. I thought I had that disabled. Will go check...

Yep, UPNP was on in the router. I remember I did a hardware reset a few nights ago, and must have missed that setting. Disabled it, and the ICS icon is gone from Network Connections. Not sure I really care, but at least I know where it was coming from.

Now for the other thing. I can tell from web searches that it is for MS Virtual PC support, but the thing is, I have never installed that. Is there somewhere else I can check to see if that package is installed?

Edit: should mention that nothing shows up in add/remove programs. I will keep snooping.