My new XP computer seems to have some quirks that I'm unsure about.

At startup, it appears from the blinking lights on my modem that the
computer is sending data to or receiving data from somewhere on the
newtwork. This is somewhat disturbing. Any idea what is going on?

The computer came installed with a Norton Firewall, which I
activiated. It detected a number of programs that might want to
access the network (a lot of which seem to be Microsoft or Windows
related). I blocked a few, but wasn't sure about most of them, is
there any need to have any OS files access the net for proper
functioning? Norton Firewall seems more complicated than free Zone
Alarm, which is what I used on my old Win98 machine. In Zone Alarm, I
basically blocked everyhting except stuff I knew and wanted to use the
net, such as my mail, telnet, and ftp clients, web browser(s), etc.
Any recommendations to optimize Norton firewall performance
performance?

Another thing I did in Win 98 was use the "paranoia" tab in the "Tweak
UI" aadd-on provided by Microsoft to clear all of my settings, IE
browser history, etc. at each shutdown. I suspect that this cleanup
would not stop the CIA from finding out stuff, but it does keep
information about my computer use away from casual users
automatically. Does XP have any similar functionality?

Thanks in advance,

Ted