Thanks, Peter, I had Forte active in the VST/DirectX Instruments/Plugins selection dialog; which I now set to VSC DXi to see what happens (the checkmark 'Use VST/DXi Synth' in the MIDI/Audio Drivers Setup was not active, though, just selected 'Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth' ... yet who knows).

I am gaining confidence that the communication to 224.0.0.22 seems to be thoroughly harmless. People give advice on how to -> deactivate IP multicasting. It doesn't appear that malicious communication is possible at all here - just telling the router 'hello, I am here', for whatever murky purpose. The puzzling issue remains, though, why should BiaB do that in the first place; and your hunch may shed some light onto this issue.

BTW, in the meantime I ran a thorough www.malwarebytes.org scan over my system with zero result - which is promising for the time being, and sure keeps up the suspense.


Martin