I have a 3rd party firewall, so have always disabled the XP one. Since SP2, I always have alg.exe running in the background, even though the firewall is still disabled. Just wondering if this is normal or if I'm 'special'.

Yo, from what I've heard, it's bad to be running more than one firewall at once. Same with the anti-virus, more than one is bad. They'll compete with each other and mess up your computer. Zach http://www.protonic.com Fast, Free Technical Support!!!

Process File: alg or alg.exe Process Name: Application Layer Gateway Service Description: Part of Internet Connection Sharing application and Internet Connection Firewall for Windows XP. This service provides support for third party protocol plug-ins for the Internet Connection Sharing application and Internet Connection Firewall. Company: Microsoft Corp. System Process: Yes Security Risk ( Virus/Trojan/Worm/Adware/Spyware ): No Common Errors: N/A You could disable the service and not worry if you are not using ICS. KTTD Though I walk through the valley of Microsoft, I shall fear no OS for skills are with me

for those who really read the question, he asked if the alg.exe process is really supposed to be active even with the XP firewall turned off. I don't know the answer, but I find it annoying that it remains although I do not use that firewall.

... although you can probably disable the service if you don't intend to use it anymore. Click start -> run, type services.msc, find the service named "Application layer gateway Service". Rightclick, stop. Then you may also doubleclick it and choose to inactive it (instead of having it at "manual") so it won't start next time you restart windows.