Background Noise

What's happening on your computer without your knowledge? A closer look at the Windows 11 operating system.

Microsoft has changed the personal computer into just another Smartphone. Since the early days of Windows, more and more processes are running in the background, slowing the system down and opening uncounted security vulnerabilities. And like Android telephones, the operating system appears to be “free” because it is subsidized by applications that pay to be on the platform. Whereas in the past this was inconsequential, today these applications are busy in the background unless you find them and disable them. How do we know?

I have a weakness. I have to admit it. It goes all the way back to Windows 3.1. It is Solitaire. Don’t know why, but I often play the game. Back in the beginning, the game was simply amusement. About the only thing the Solitaire game did to your computer was write your latest scores to an INI file (a simple text file).

Today? The game is a different beast and it illustrates the divide between casual home use and the rigors of enterprise security. To say the least, enterprises do not buy laptops off the shelf at Costco. The personal laptop I use for travel is your basic retail brand Windows laptop. It is bloated with software that insists on communicating with remote sites. It is the polar opposite of what should be running on corporate laptops and it points to the exceptional rigor that IT specialists in the corporate world must extend to secure the computer that runs on Windows.

The game got my attention one day while checking background network activity on my computer. I was struck by the two dozen or so connections from the Solitaire game. I ran a command to track the activity for further review. What I learned was everything that goes on when I load something as simple as a card game onto my computer. It explains a lot of things about today’s gaming technology. It is “free” but it has a train of advertisements that are piped into the footer of the gaming window. Then it seems to know how often you have played the game and automatically posts beguiling enticements to add other games. And all this is being ported to a remote site that collects some data on how often you play the game. What else is it gathering?

The Connections

What I discovered was not necessarily a trail of evil. No, what I encountered was the common engineering of Internet-delivered content. The Solitaire game involved the following:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS)

• Amazon Content Accelerator (Cloudfront)

• Google User Content (Rented server capacity from Google)

• Mark Monitor (1e100) – brand protection service

• Akamai Technologies – Content delivery service (probably the ads)

• Iguana Solutions SAS – Cloud “performance” metrics

• Domain Protection Services (hwcdn)

• Cloudfare

• Level 3 Parent, LLC (Telecom provider)

• Microsoft

You can appreciate, in a nutshell, why most enterprises purge games from their corporate workstations. Highly secured workstations will often be restricted further by limiting access to specific websites or corporate databases. But once someone engages a browser to a remote site, all the above-listed players may appear because these services are quite common, utilized by websites to deliver content and track user activity. For that reason, highly secured workstations will restrict browser utilization.

To secure a system, how do system specialists in the corporate arena trim off the fat to better enhance the performance of their assets and reduce security risks? They utilize a set of tools that come with the Microsoft operating system and which you, as a regular user, can use as well. The end result is a slim-downed version of the PC you buy off the shelf. Only essential services are running. This is, in a large sense, what corporate system specialists do, producing a default “image” of a clean, relatively more secure, PC. When a new PC is purchased, this image is copied onto the PC’s hard drive, overwriting everything that was on the hard drive. So long Solitaire.

Introducing The Windows Chronicles

It was experiences like this that fueled my career in IT, whether it was analyzing performance and security issues on a small office network (of a hundred users) or the corporate cloud center (over 2000 servers). Microsoft systems are bloated with extraneous applications that have little to do with actual computer operations, but instead introduce “features” that degrade performance and open serious security vulnerabilities.

It is this sort of experience that has convinced me to make one final effort to write about technology. I am getting on in years (close to 70). My interest in technology is less technical, and more sociological. I find it fascinating how technology affects human behavior. I also love to write and I do not intend on regressing to an electric typewriter. So I must use a computer. My preference is to use my Linux system at home. It is substantially faster than a Windows system and very secure. Yet I must contend with Windows because I travel with a laptop that runs on a Windows platform.

Rather than bitch and moan, I figured I would begin a journal that enables the casual user of Windows to join me in probing into the depths of the Windows operating system without having to be an IT geek. I will call it The Windows Chronicles, my journey to demystifying my computer, exploring whether there is any hope for Windows. Like a Killer Sudoku puzzle, poking around on my computer keeps my mind fresh.

During this journey you will be introduced to a set of tools that help isolate unneeded traffic and applications, tools that you can easily access and use at no cost because they are included with Windows. We will then proceed through various applications and processes, exploring how these questionable events are isolated and how you can control them.

One Caveat

I must concede one thing. In the IT world, there is no such thing as a final edit. IT is far too dynamic. As I stated above, this is a journey. Don’t be surprised if you read an article and discover it is revised two months later, or over the course of a year it is amended two or three times. The Windows operating system is as much mystery as it is science. Just when you think you have found an answer, you discover that something else is affected, or that the symptom mysteriously reappears.

While writing this journal, I must acknowledge the contributions of other specialists, most of whom I have worked with but many who I have never formally met, who have provided helpful information in Reddit, Stack Exchange or Microsoft. In the end, figuring out the riddles buried in the Windows operating system is a team effort.

Enjoy.

© Copyright 2025 to Eric Niewoehner