What is polink.exe and why is it trying to access internet?

[SFSxOI]

When ever i'm using PB, my firewall pops up with a message that polink.exe launched by PureBasic.exe is trying to access the internet. Why is this?

[PB]

Polink.exe is part of the compilation process, it's all normal. Haven't heard
of it trying to access the Internet though... which firewall is saying that?
What's the exact message?

[Dare2]

Done a virus scan lately?

[SFSxOI]

yep, virus scan is done every two days automatically on this computer while i'm away at work. And, spybot gets run once a week. AV is Nortons with the latest updates and signatures. The firewall is Sygate pro (now owned by symantic i think). The message is "polink.exe launched by PureBasic.exe is trying to access the internet" Then if I answer 'No' to not allow it, in my security logs there is an application hijack entry for it. It doesn;t happen continously, but if i'm using PB for a few hours it will happen at least twice during that time, and at random.

[PB]

> "polink.exe launched by PureBasic.exe is trying to access the internet"

Does it give a destination IP address? If it's 127.0.0.1, then it's okay because
it's just trying to loop back to your own PC, and not access the internet at all.
But that's enough to make some firewalls throw up a warning...

[netmaestro]

no way it should be accessing the internet, possibly an internal thing like 127.0.0.1?

[Dare2]

Still, it is curious that it wants to do any sort of connection. And only sometimes.

[SFSxOI]

OK, it just did it again and I see now that the remote address its trying to access is 0.0.0.0 which is nowhere so its not a serious thing at all i guess. I'm thinking like you tho, why is it trying to make a connection at all?

[Psychophanta]

SFSxOI, try to configure your firewall telling it this ip 127.0.0.1 is a trust IP.

[PB]

> why is it trying to make a connection at all?

Not sure of the technical reasons, but I've had lots of apps that do a loop
back to themselves even though they have no internet functionality at all.
Maybe it's some form of copy-protection or something, or they need to
run as a server/client internally -- something we wouldn't normally see
but the firewall picks up and alerts us?

[ts-soft]

polink doesn't call to internet, only your debugger do this.
For example Dr. Watson. You can stop the Service

[blueapples]

Some debugers, for instance, use sockets to communicate. Maybe it's something like this?

[Fred]

That's wierd, it never ever tried to access internet here (Kerio is monitoring all this).

[PB]

> That's wierd, it never ever tried to access internet here (Kerio is monitoring all this)

Confirmed here too -- I'd been using Kerio for quite a while and never saw it
prompt anything about Polink.exe, and it wasn't in Kerio's rules either.

(Off-topic note: I uninstalled Kerio and started using the Windows Firewall for
a test lately, and I had 3 x videos queued in Shareaza that hadn't downloaded
for over 3 months -- they were always "Pending". The very same day I stopped
using Kerio (just a few days ago), they all suddenly finished downloading!
Co-incidence? I doubt it. I think Kerio was affecting Shareaza somehow, even
though I could do searches and download other things. Very strange!).