I'm not familiar with that one. Do you have any packet sniffing software installed? Any third-party networking apps? Also, I'd advise running a trojan scan, just in case.

i don't own any packet sniffers and i don't have any third party net apps, as far as a trojan scan all i have is my anti-virus (AVG) and i don't know if it can detect trojans i'm searching download.com for one just in case

The remote packet capture protocol service is installed by WinPCap (The Packet Capture and Network Monitoring Library for Windows), which is a packet capture program that intercepts all network traffic. So when incoming data is received by the computer it is given to this service before it is passed onto the program it was meant for, and when your program sends network traffic this service sees it before it is sent to the system for uploading. This allows other programs, such as Ethereal, to parse this data for such things as Firewalls, packet sniffers, etc. It is not a required service, but it is needed for programs that use it.

so it's normal then, ok it had me worried a little, thanks.

The only program that I can think of that installs WinPCap is Ethereal, but that's packet-analysis software and if he doesn't have any such software installed... Strange.

winpcap 3.1 beta shows up in add/remove programs i have no clue where it came from, virus and trojan scans are negitive. i've checked both my hard drives. unless i've been hacked there is no packet sniffers or ethereal on my computer. i have noticed something strange though the computer "thinks" it has a network connection even when my modem is disconnected. i do not have a fuctioning network card just an internal modem. but as it's shutting down the screen says "closing network connections" (win xp shut down screen) maybe it just old age after all this thing is three years old, with any luck soon i'll have an updated system (tech-wise)

bp and <grudgingly) the Hare-Horse chimaera have it right - it's nothing to worry about. Just uninstall WinPCap, run a reg cleaner (Norton Utilities Windoctor, Registry Mechanic, or CCleaner's "Issues" tool) through your system, and it will be gone. If it bothers you. it doesn't use much in the way of system overhead and it doesn't do any harm.