bonjour?

[M Weiss]

The Zone Alarm program on my system alerted me that a program called bonjour
is trying to connect to the Internet. A Windows search found 2 folders
associated with this program:

In the Program Files folder there is a Bonjour folder that contains 2
programs: mDNSResponder.exe and dns-sd.exe, as well as 2 DLLs. These
programs do not appear in the program list of Add/Remove list.

In the Windows folder there is a folder named Prefetch that contains what
appears to be a log of all the programs I used in last 30 days with a pf
extension. For example

RUNDLL32.EXE-3C500167.pf

Any idea what this is all about? And if it is a spyware, is there a safe way
to delete it?

 

[Nepatsfan]

The Zone Alarm program on my system alerted me that a
program called bonjour is trying to connect to the Internet.
A Windows search found 2 folders associated with this
program:
In the Program Files folder there is a Bonjour folder that
contains 2 programs: mDNSResponder.exe and dns-sd.exe, as
well as 2 DLLs. These programs do not appear in the program
list of Add/Remove list.
In the Windows folder there is a folder named Prefetch that
contains what appears to be a log of all the programs I used
in last 30 days with a pf extension. For example

RUNDLL32.EXE-3C500167.pf

Any idea what this is all about? And if it is a spyware, is
there a safe way to delete it?

A search on Google would have led you to a number of sites that
point to iTunes as being the source of the Bonjour folder.

Here are just a couple of examples:

http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/mdnsresponder/

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/99609816/m/476001825731

The Prefetch folder is part of Windows XP. It provides
information to the operating system so that applications are
launched quicker. If you delete it's contents Windows will
simply create new entries. Don't worry about it.

Nepatsfan

 

[Robert Moir]

The Zone Alarm program on my system alerted me that a program called
bonjour is trying to connect to the Internet. A Windows search found
2 folders associated with this program:

In the Program Files folder there is a Bonjour folder that contains 2
programs: mDNSResponder.exe and dns-sd.exe, as well as 2 DLLs. These
programs do not appear in the program list of Add/Remove list.

In the Windows folder there is a folder named Prefetch that contains
what appears to be a log of all the programs I used in last 30 days
with a pf extension. For example

RUNDLL32.EXE-3C500167.pf

Any idea what this is all about? And if it is a spyware, is there a
safe way to delete it?

Bonjour is a network extension and utility designed by Apple, and as such
may have been bundled with iTunes or Quicktime or anything like that which
you may have installed recently. While I'm not aware of any hardware doing
this, its also quite possible that any new drivers for a printer or suchlike
would add bonjour support as part of their install. As such, this is a
"legitimate" item of software.

This actually raises an interesting point - you mention spyware, and yet
every download I've seen that includes bonjour makes it quite clear prior to
the download or during the install that bonjour is going to be installed. If
you or someone else is installing software without looking at what is
actually being installed, then you might be lucky up to now but this is
certainly one of the best ways to contract a bad case of spyware.


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