Question : Excessive port 445 traffic between Domain Controllers and many workstations

While running a sniffer on my LAN to identify some network related issues, I found that many workstations have a constant flow between themselves and the domain controllers on port 445.  It is so excessive that if I run the sniffer on my PC (has the issue also), I can fill a 100Mb buffer in just a few minutes time.  The traffic is all chatter between a D.C. and my machine.  I am seeing this in at least 10 other machines which is causing a huge amount of unecessary traffic on the LAN.
In the summary section of the packet decode it reads:
Packet - C Write and X Handle=)x400e Bytes=1024 Start=0 End=1024
Packet - R Write and X Status=OK Count=72

These keep going and incrementing.

Answer : Excessive port 445 traffic between Domain Controllers and many workstations

I have figured out the cause for the excessive traffic on TCP Port 445 between several workstations and my Domain Controllers.  The traffic was being generated or spawned by the service: HP ProtectTools

This is a service that comes with most new HP laptops.  If left un-configured it constantly tries to speak to the D.C.'s.  Why this happens I do not know, I just know that it happens.  This causes unnecessary chatter on the network and on the machines themselves.

To eliminate the problem I just disabled that service and restarted the workstation.