Bonjour Virus

Hi,

Would any of you technophiles out there know how to get rid of this bonjour virus that has infected my pc. Norton has told me its on the pc but it cant get rid of it and when I tried to delete it form programs myself, I cant as it comes up- Make sure program is not Read Only or something to that effect.
Any help really appreciated

RB

Try downloading and running some free anti virus/spyware programs and see if they can catch it;

AVG Free
SPYBOT

Make sure you update to the latest releases before you run the scans

can be an utter nightmare but try this

To remove the Bonjour Service:

• Stop Bonjour Service by opening a command prompt (remember to open the command prompt with Administrator privileges in Vista) and type:
• command prompt is: start>run>type cmd ( black window appears) then
  
  sc stop “bonjour service”
• Once that is done, in the same command prompt type:
  
  sc delete “bonjour service”
• Now we need to disable the Bonjour socket driver.
• Start> run > type regedit.exe (with Administrator privileges in Vista) and go to the key:
  
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinSock2\Parameters\NameSpace_Catalog5\Catalog_Entries\000000000004
  be very careful here and make sure you are in right directory take the time to triple check.
  (please note: the final digit in this key may vary depending on your circumstances - look through all the entries under Catalog_Entries - the key you're dealing with should contain LibraryPath = C:\Program Files\Bonjour\mdnsNSP.dll)
• Within that key find the entry:
  
  Enabled=REG_DWORD:00000001 - change it from 1 to 0.
• Exit out of the command prompt and reboot your PC.
• Once you have logged back in, delete the C:\Program Files\Bonjour (with the files mDNSResponder.exe and mdnsNSP.dll).

Not for the faint hearted. As for Norton try something better like Clamwin (free) nod32 or kaspersky.

Now I'm confused - I have a Bonjour file on my laptop which is something to do with Apple? Is this a virus file? Have checked it with Norton and it hasn't picked up any virus - is the Bonjour virus totally different to the Bonjour file??

No not a virus in the usual sense this may explain/confuse you more
[broken link removed]

it does create problem for some people more usually windows users and I don't know enough about mac to know how it responds in mac but probably completely harmless as they've developed it.

Thanks Zulp - and yes, it has confused me even more

If I remove it do you know if it will affect the running of iTunes?? I am a Windows user but I don't know if it has affected it - as you can see I do not have a clue about things like this.................many thanks.

I've just noticed that on my laptop today.

Bonjour is a networking technology from Apple Computer. What is this virus you speak of? Can't find any reference to it elsewhere.

Thanks for all the replies.
I downloaded AVG and that sorted my bonjour problem.

Norton had caught it but said it couldnt remove it...???

Ive another problem now. My internet wont work at all. It was working after the AVG download but now it wont connect. All the hardware is ok according to eircom self help and i turned off the AVG firewall to see if that was the problem but it isnt.

Any ideas??

Norton is rubbish in my expereince, AVG catches more. The best way to not get virii is to use anything aside IE.

It shouldn't have stoppped your internet connection, although it does sound like a firewall problem - you may need to uninstall Norton n as well since running two virus checkers at the same time can conflict them - Norton may be blocking. What error message comes up when you try to connect to the web?

I uninstalled Norton before putting AVG on.
The error is the standard "This webpage cannot be displayed" (im not at home so unsure of exact words). Eircom web test says all hardware is ok.

redbhoy said:

Thanks for all the replies.
I downloaded AVG and that sorted my bonjour problem.

Norton had caught it but said it couldnt remove it...???

Ive another problem now. My internet wont work at all. It was working after the AVG download but now it wont connect. All the hardware is ok according to eircom self help and i turned off the AVG firewall to see if that was the problem but it isnt.

Any ideas??

Click to expand...

Can you be more specifc about this bonjour virus your talking about. I can't find any info on the web about. The only bonjour I know is the apple networking service, which isn't a virus. Why do you think its a virus. Because Norton said so? It could be a false postive. Norton is woeful. AVG probably knows its not a virus hence why its not reporting it.

It sais something along the lines of bonjour/mfc42/.exe For all i know its not a virus. Im a bit slow when it comes to the software on pcs.

Well done Norton.

I'd say you've just scared the wits out of a rake of people with iTunes, who don't know that bonjour is a valid program. Unless of course there is a virus of the same name, which I'm not ruling out, just that you'd expect it to be huge news if there was.

I'll throw in my two cents about Bonjour. Yes, it is a legitimate product from a legitimate software company, but it behaves just like a virus. I was nearly about to reformat my whole computer and start from scratch because of Bonjour. It installed itself without my permission when I installed iTunes. Shortly thereafter, my internet connection would just drop out at random times, usually about 10 times per day. The only way to get back on the internet was to reboot the computer. I uninstalled iTunes, but that doesn't uninstall Bonjour, so I used the Bonjour removal tool in Windows "Programs and Features" to remove it, also. It looked like it had been removed, but it hadn't. It was still running in the background. Every time I would start up Frostwire or uTorrent Zonealarm would ask me if I wanted to give Bonjour acess to the internet. I thought that was suspicious because both of those apps are used to illegally download music. It almost seemed as if Apple/iTunes was trying to keep track of my downloads. Why else would Bonjour need to access the internet when I started Frostwire?

So anyway, this nightmare continued for weeks. I had to continually reboot to stay connected to the internet. I went into MSConfig and unchecked everything Apple so that no Apple products would launch at startup. That didn't work. I tried shutting down Bonjour service, but that didn't work. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get Bonjour to shut down, or not automatically start at startup. As far as I'm concerned, any app that does that IS A VIRUS!

Finally, I found a Bonjour removal tool on the internet. Apparently other people had been having my same problem and someone developed a removal tool. Once again, when a third party has to develop a removal too to remove a piece of crap software, that piece of crap software IS A VIRUS!

It's now been three days since I removed Bonjour, and I haven't had to reboot once. I have no doubt that Bonjour was the cause of my problems. Apple can kiss my ass.

sam1174 said:

Apple can kiss my ass.

Click to expand...

They'd probably install a virus in the process!

This is what Bonjour is
[broken link removed]

I've never had a problem with it. Always uninstalls fine. Seems likes its a wide enough issue though.

Here's what Wikipedia says:

Bonjour services are installed without explicit user permission and the software is often not necessary for running the programs that bundle it. While there are no documented conflicts with anti-virus software packages or the Microsoft Windows operating system, some corporate firewalls may raise a warning when Bonjour attempts to broadcast the availability of network services. Some technical forums have reported that the service can break a configured internet connection and also can conflict with system files on certain versions of Windows. Other programs with which it interferes include Juniper Network Connect, a VPN client.
Stability of the software varies with each version. Misbehaviour on larger corporate or ISP networks caused when Bonjour issues excessive or malfunctioning broadcasts are unwelcomed by IT managers,especially given the limited technical support Apple provides for this product. Users who manually disable the service will often find it re-enabled by Apple's regular software updates.

Sounds like a virus to me.

I updated iTunes recently, and a while later one of my security products asked if I wanted to allow Bonjour access to the internet. My first instince was that it was a virus, a quick web search showed it was from Apple, however Apple should be much more transparent and up front with something like this - even the name sounds like a virus.

A quick message/alert during the installation to say that Bonjour had been installed and that it might ask for access to the internet wouldn't be difficult to implement.

Apple have been quite sneaky in how they handle their software updates, for example automatically enabling installation of Safari regardless of whether users already have it.