ICS on home network - dials in whenever any box restarts

[shark_megabyte]

I'm running Win98/SE (3 machines) and WinME (one machine) on a home network with two 3Com hubs. I followed the setup guides for ICS starting on Practically Networked (http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/ics/icsinstall.htm) , and I have Twiga's (http://www.twiga.ltd.uk) Remote Disconnect Utility in place allowing any user to log off the dialup connection.

I finished installing and setting up RDU yesterday morning, and when I tested the whole scheme, I noticed that any time any system was restarted, the ICS server immediately dialed in. At first I thought Norton Internet Security was doing this - that it thought it was supposed to be connected all the time - and, not finding a way to change its connection settings, I uninstalled it.

Nope, still happens. So then I went into the Network control panel on every machine. I unbound the File/Print Sharing, Client for Microsoft Networks, and Windows Family Logon from everything except NetBEUI on the NIC. (I thought perhaps receiving TCP/IP local network traffic was triggering the connection). But it's still happening.

This setup would be great if I could just get it to stop jumping the gun like this. Who's got another idea?

[BipolarBill]

The problem is that there are many MS sub-applications that need access to the net. Critical Update and other "phone home" apps do it. The Time Synch wizard does too.

The only sure way to avoid it completely is to unplug the client PC until you need access.