# dns.exe listening to many ports



## ahDong (Feb 7, 2012)

hi all,

i m running windows server 2003, recently it have been rather weird with its network activities. after some diagnostic, i had notice the dns.exe are listening to a lot of ports. i m not quite sure of my description but it is illustrated by the picture below.

http://i648.photobucket.com/albums/uu201/210studio/dns-1.jpg

is this normal? i mean i had a quick check with Mr Google and bump to the below link:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverPN/thread/5e8bf8f0-5869-4d89-b569-c73e3ba86cee

due to heavy load of data in the server, i dun really wan to try things that seems uncertain..

advise & suggestion are appreciated! thanks in advance


----------



## centauricw (Jun 26, 2010)

If you have no forward zones setup or are not using it as a caching server, you can simply turn off the DNS service. Otherwise, you can restrict it to listen on only the IP addresses that will receive incoming requests. Short of that, this could be one of Microsoft's "don't worry, be happy" solutions.


----------



## ahDong (Feb 7, 2012)

Hi centauricw, thanks for taking time to read my post.

what does it mean by forward zones setup? but this server does act as DNS to the other PCs...could this dns.exe invoke by virus or something? some searching on google shows that this might be invoke by virus / spyware.


----------

