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

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 1:42 am
by 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?

Re: What is polink.exe and why is it trying to access intern

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 1:56 am
by 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?

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 2:25 am
by Dare2
Done a virus scan lately?

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:06 am
by 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.

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:49 am
by 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...

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 4:01 am
by netmaestro
no way it should be accessing the internet, possibly an internal thing like 127.0.0.1?

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 4:40 am
by Dare2
Still, it is curious that it wants to do any sort of connection. And only sometimes.

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 9:19 pm
by 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?

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 10:21 pm
by Psychophanta
SFSxOI, try to configure your firewall telling it this ip 127.0.0.1 is a trust IP.

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 11:26 pm
by 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?

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 11:48 pm
by ts-soft
polink doesn't call to internet, only your debugger do this.
For example Dr. Watson. You can stop the Service

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:25 am
by blueapples
Some debugers, for instance, use sockets to communicate. Maybe it's something like this?

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 11:22 am
by Fred
That's wierd, it never ever tried to access internet here (Kerio is monitoring all this).

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 11:31 am
by 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! :shock:
Co-incidence? I doubt it. I think Kerio was affecting Shareaza somehow, even
though I could do searches and download other things. Very strange!).