Tries to connect to 92.123.68.97 on startup

[gyorgy_foldvari]

I have 2.0 Build 42.2 version Pro installed, and since I have updated to this version XChange Viewer tries to connect to 92.123.68.97 on each start.
Is it normal? What is the purpose of this? How can I avoid this?

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello gyorgy_foldvari,

Since build 42.2 we have added a context menu option in the viewer that allows you to select a text in the document and with just a right click on that text to perform a search for this text in an editable list of search providers. Our Viewer tries to connect to all the providers in your list in order to obtain the icons you would see next to them. This is the only thing our viewer will try to connect to the net for. If you do not wish to use that functionality, simply delete all search providers (Edit -> Preferences -> Search Providers) and our viewer will no longer try to connect to the web.

Regards,
Stefan

[BigMike]

1. Yes, it's normal.
2. It's because of the new feature of using internet search engines from within the viewer. At startup, the viewer tries to get the corresponding favicons for the installed search providers.
3. To avoid this,
- either delete all your search providers (to get rid of the predefined search providers, delete the XML files in <ViewerInstallDir>\PDF Viewer\SearchProviders)
- or edit the XML files and change the "<Image width="16" height="16" type="image/icon">http://.../favicon.ico</Image>" entry to
a) an empty entry, so that the default icon is used
b) a local path to an icon (that's my solution - it needs a bit more work to download the icons from the corresponding address to your harddrive and change the path, but then you keep the different icons)

Note: The default search providers come back with each update. So, if you want to keep this feature, you should consider to create your custom search providers. Then you change it once for your custom providers and simply delete the default search providers after each update.

[gyorgy_foldvari]

Thanks for the prompt answer!
Maybe it would be useful to put a checkbox into this setting dialogue which would disable/enable this - otherways very useful - feature.

[Chris - Tracker Supp]

Thanks for you input BigMike.

Cheers,
Chris

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

gyorgy_foldvari,

I've pointed out your suggestion to the dev team. It may be something that can be added but it would likely be low on the priority list... We'll see what comes of it.

regards

[mboucetta]

Hello

I am interesting by your tool.
I am investigating on the best tool for PDF markup for my customer.
The way you are trying to connect internet each time the tool is launched is very annoying (my viewer runs with no end in background).
Could you just add a short time out?
The work around is working fine but it's difficult for me to explain to my customer this issue.

Regards

[majoMo]

Trying to access 213.155.157 [Akamai International B.V.] here.

It seems it doesn't belong at list of search providers.

[BigMike]

Akamai isn't a search provider. Akamai is a company that optimizes somehow the internet services of their customers by analyzing the current internet traffic and redirecting the requests through their network to the most suited server. I'm not really sure, how this works in detail.
But if you like to have a look at their customers list, you'll find Microsoft and Yahoo! for example. I'm not sure about the other search providers. I believe Google manages the load balance with their own server farms.
If you're interested in which entry is responsible for this request, you'll have to check them one by one.

By the way, the address 92.123.68.97 from the first post is also related to Akamai.

[Vasyl-Tracker Dev Team]

...Maybe it would be useful to put a checkbox into this setting dialogue which would disable/enable this - otherways very useful - feature.

Compromise solution: the application will create connection to receive icon of each search provider and will save it to a file (cache icon).
Next time the icon of each search provider will be simply read from a file, without connecting outside..

[majoMo]

@ BigMike, thanks for the info.

Next time the icon of each search provider will be simply read from a file, without connecting outside..

Well figured out.

[mboucetta]

Hello,

This is a good idea but the issue will remain.
Let me explain my first experience with your tool:
First of all, I am connected to a network but my user can’t access internet.
1. I installed the tool (no issue)
2. I started the tool and opened a file to edit it, then I saved it (still good so far)
3. I tried to reopen the saved file…5mn after, the tool was still trying to start in background (cpu 50%)
4. I restart windows…same issue
5. I uninstalled and reinstalled the soft…same issue.
6. Something went to my brain …I unplugged the network plug…bingo! The tool worked like a charm.
7. I went to your forum and I found the work around.
It’s why a time out would be a nice solution to this issue.

Regards,

[BigMike]

1. If your customer hasn't got access to the internet, the search providers are completely useless for him, since they permit searching terms on the internet, directly from the viewer. Also a timeout would still bring a useless waste of cpu time at every start up of the viewer. A clean solution would be removing all the search providers, so that no connection attempt is made, to get icons for a - in your case - useless feature. So, maybe you should vote for an extra install option for the predefined search providers - so that they can be unchecked at install time.

2. The solution with caching icons is great for dial up users. At the moment, at every start of the viewer, their dial up dialog pops up and they have to connect to the internet. This is pretty annoying! (Dial up users may be a minority in these times, but they still exist...)
In future, the icons are downloaded once and then the local copy will be used. They loose no functionality, but an internet connection is only needed, if they really use the internet search. In fact this is the automation of the workaround to download the icons and change the paths manually in the xml files.

3. People with a permanent connection won't notice the difference.

[Vasyl-Tracker Dev Team]

...
1. I installed the tool (no issue)
2. I started the tool and opened a file to edit it, then I saved it (still good so far)
3. I tried to reopen the saved file…5mn after, the tool was still trying to start in background (cpu 50%)
4. I restart windows…same issue
5. I uninstalled and reinstalled the soft…same issue.
6. Something went to my brain …I unplugged the network plug…bingo! The tool worked like a charm.
...

Very strange behavior.
1. What antivirus do you use?
2. Please zip and attach your pdf-file to the post so we can reproduce the problem.

[mboucetta]

Hello,

I'am using AVG + Norton.
+ But I tried on another box without any antivirus and face the same issue).
This issue is not related to the pdf.
+ I tried to simply open the viewer (without any pdf) and I have had the same issue.

Note than when I open Internet explorer and try to access google (for instance), IE wait google response with no end.
Maybe something related to the firewall, I don't know. But it's the way the system works. I can't modify the corporate system.

FYI: Some people can access internet through an "Automatic proxy configuration URL".

I hope those information can help.
Regards,

[Vasyl-Tracker Dev Team]

Note than when I open Internet explorer and try to access google (for instance), IE wait google response with no end.
Maybe something related to the firewall, I don't know. But it's the way the system works. I can't modify the corporate system.

Okay. We will to add special check box to disable obtaining icons for search providers. It will be able in Preferences->Search Providers tab in the new build. Please wait.

[mboucetta]

Good!

[John - Tracker Supp]

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

Also, in the new build the installer will contain icons for 'standard' search providers, so it will not try to download these icons from internet.

[BigMike]

Thank you Ivan

[mboucetta]

Hello,

Rigth we have search icon provided by the installation.
But Wrong, the tool still tries to connect Internet!
I have uninstalled previous version and installed version 2.042.4
Same issue as above.

Thanks anyway,

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi mboucetta at al,

Has any one else seen this behaviour? I just tried a test of 42.4 removing PDF-XChange Viewer from my firewall list of allowed programs and I'm not seeing any related internet activity when starting the Viewer. So I'd be interested in seeing if you have some legacy issue causing this. I'm going to test for this on a fresh VM and see what comes.

[BigMike]

Hi Paul, hi mboucetta,

I just tried it with a fresh installation on a virtual machine.
I used the PDF-XChange PRO bundle EXE-installer and it seems, that the icon for the MSN Live search handler is missing.

But since you will be automatically redirected to bing.com if you try to search via search.live.com, probably the default search provider for MSN Live search should be removed anyway...

Regards

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Thanks BigMike for doing that.

I ran a fresh install of PDFX4_wV.exe on a clean VM. I then ran Wireshark http://www.wireshark.org/ both during the install and again when launching PDFXView and in both cases saw only web traffic from the viewer after calling a search. This instance of the viewer (build 42.4) did not make any attempt to connect to the internet on start up. My conclusion from this is that the issue was fixed in 42.4 in that the calls at startup have been removed.

If anyone is still getting connection attempts at start up I would ask them to check if there are any legacy folders in the installation path. The best way to do this would be:

• uninstall the product (Viewer AND other if PDF-XChange 4 Pro is uesed), remove all Tracker Software products folders/subfolders from Program Files as well as any lingering start menu or desktop shortcuts.
• restart your PC
• Run the latest installer from the download page: http://www.docu-track.com/downloads/users/
• test for connection attempts on Viewer start up. (Wireshark is a good tool for this: http://www.wireshark.org/

If after doing this you are still getting connection attempts on starting the viewer please post your results here detailing you OS version and whether 32/64 bit, the connection attempt details - source/destination etc and anything else that you think might help us investigate this further.

And I also noticed that Livesearch went to Bing. This also happens in IE 7 for me. Does anyone know if they have been integrated?

[BigMike]

Ok, Paul

Maybe I should be more explicit. Just to be sure, that you don't use another version of the installer, I'm using also PDFX4_wV.exe. Its MD5 hash is

Code: Select all

1660FF21C3928E848C79E1A2A5DC4D28

The problem is, that the file "live.png", which should contain the icon for the MSN Live search provider is missing. You may easily check this in a fresh installation, if you navigate to the SearchProviders subdirectory. It contains 8 XML files, but only 7 PNG files.

The viewer won't try to connect at startup, since the default search provider is Bing and this icon came with the installer. It's the only one, which is needed at startup to be displayed in the toolbar.
But when you open the drop down menu to select another search provider, the viewer displays all search providers and therefore tries to get the missing icon for MSN Live search.

I don't think, that this information is needed, but as you requested:
- I'm using a Windows XP, SP3 32bit image on Sun VirtualBox. It's completely clean and so, there's no need to uninstall anything
- As I wrote above, there are no connection attempts at start up, you need to display the list of search providers.
- I can tell you, in this case, the viewer will download the missing icon and save it as expected. If this was successful, there won't be any further connection attempts until you really use the Internet search feature.

Since Bing is Microsofts new search engine, I think Live Search won't come back. Especially since there's no "Beta" hint anymore on bing.com...

Hope this makes all a bit clearer,
Mike

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Thanks BigMike for the clear and concise reply.

Your comments make total sense and are consistent with what I saw when testing. I expect the solution here is just to delete the Live search completely from the list of default search providers in the next build.

We appreciate your for taking the time to investigate/clarify this issue. We are taking bugs/inconsistencies very seriously and this is typical of the issues we face, namely nailing down exactly what the issue is can be much of the task at hand. We are committed to resolving this and the other bugs being catalogued before moving on to new features etc.

Thanks again for the help.

[mboucetta]

Thanks BigMike & Paul

[BigMike]

It was a pleasure to help Fine, that it's clear now!

[Paul - Tracker Supp]