Huge bandwith usage from Windows7 64 bit

Just got a new computer, ZT Systems 3.4 i7-2600, 16 GB RAM, running Windows 7 64 bit. I love the computer, I love working on the OS. I do not love the massive amounts of bandwidth I'm using apparently from doing nothing.

In 24 hours, we used 4.5 gigs of Internet bandwidth on this thing. Running Windows XP on our earlier computer ... yes, we were badly out of date ... we averaged about 25 gigs of bandwidth a MONTH.

This is a concern because we have Comcast as our ISP, and they have a cap of 250 GB a month before they will turn you off.

And yes, I can do the math, we could still do 10 times our previous usage before hitting the cap, but there's also the thing that I like to be in complete and total control of my system and have it behave the way I want it to, and I'm not liking this OS eating bandwidth like this.

We did have some update downloads, but they were nowhere near a gig, let alone 4.5.

Most of the usage over the 24-hour period was, basically, surfing the Internet.

Like this morning, I logged onto the computer and was sending email from web browser (don't have address book moved over yet). I was watching usage just as an experiment. It was negligible, then bam, 182 MB. When I detected this problem, I downloaded Net Balancer to check on things, and it showed that huge spike was from svchost.exe. I'm also getting huge spikes from Service Traffic.

We do not have a virus or malware, have run scans.

We do have a network set up, but our router is secure and we've seen no suspicious usage. No one is leeching off the system. In fact, most of the first 24 hours was spent without a router even hooked up and broadcasting, I had to replace the one we had because it wasn't Windows 7 compliant.

I have very few startup programs running, only the necessary ones, have checked that.

I'm getting a bit of extra bandwidth usage as per Net Balancer from Norton's stuff which came bundled with the computer, which I hate and am going to get rid of as soon as it's time to renew our licenses with ESET which we've used for years and uses microscopic bandwidth and CPU.

If I need to provide any other info, I can, although I'm not great at screen shots.

My question is, is this just a quirk of Windows 7 64 bit that we're going to have to live with and adjust to, or can it be made to stop? I've been scouring the Internet the last day, including this forum and have seen that this has been an issue for other folks. I've seen folks advised to check for viruses, check the processes running, etc., and then when everything checks out, it's like "OK."

Well, this isn't OK as far as I'm concerned, I want to make it stop if I can. I've got too much into the computer to want to take it back and go two systems backward to XP, but I'm really not loving this. I want to make it stop.

Thanks in advance for any help, sorry to be so long but I wanted to be detailed

OK, I know now how to provide that info as to what svchost is running, will get it to you ASAP. Also, I have both a tool on my computer and Comcast's online service to tell how much bandwidth I'm using, both uploading and downloading, and they usually are right in sync and they are consistent on the 4.5 gig usage I reported.