What is Bonjour and why is it installed?

 

When you install any edition of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 family or a Creative Suite 3 component on Windows, Bonjour for Windows is installed as a service on the machine. Bonjour is Apple's open source implementation of zero-configuration networking software. It is used by Adobe Version Cue CS3 client applications to dynamically discover Version Cue Servers on the local network.

For it to function correctly, you must allow Bonjour access to the internet through your firewall. Bonjour checks to see whether the DNS server configured on your computer supports service discovery. No data is transmitted to Adobe. Bonjour connects to no other servers than your machine's pre-configured DNS server. Bonjour also sends network packets to and receives them from a multicast IP address on the local network (244.0.0.251) once every thirty minutes. This address is reserved for multicast traffic on a local network and such network packets never leave the local network.

 

Identifying the Bonjour service in the Windows Services control panel

 

When installed by Creative Suite 3 applications, the name used by Bonjour for Windows in the Services control panel is:

##Id_String2.6844F930_1628_4223_B5CC_5BB94B879762##

To correct the service's name, open a Windows command prompt and type the following two commands. Each command needs to be executed individually -- type in the command and hit enter to execute it, then wait till you are back at a prompt (C:/>) :

"C:\Program Files\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe" -remove
"C:\Program Files\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe" -install

The service will now be displayed with the correct name in the Services control panel.

 

Removing Bonjour for Windows

 

To remove Bonjour:

1.Open a Windows command prompt and type the following command:
"C:\Program Files\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe -remove"
2.Navigate to the following folder in Windows Explorer: C:\Program Files\Bonjour
3.Rename the mdnsNSP.dll file in that folder to mdnsNSP.old
4.Restart your computer
5.Delete the the Program Files\Bonjour folder

Note: Removing Bonjour prevents Version Cue clients (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Bridge) from automatically discovering Version Cue Servers and Version Cue projects in your local network. You will need to connect manually using Connect to Server and the URL or IP address of the machine running Version Cue Server instead.