The Messenger Service is built into all versions and variants of Windows NT, which includes NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows XP but is not included in Windows 95, 98 and ME.
The Messenger Service is not be confused with the Windows Messenger or MSN Messenger which are basically IM clients.
The legitimate use of Messenger service is to allow machines and users on a network to receive alert messages. Actually it is a one way service in the sense that you can receive messages, but cannot ‘reply’. Of course, you can send a message from your end too.
Unfortunately, the Messenger service is being abused by the same people who send you spam messages. You might have seen advertisements pop up on your screen in a window titled ‘Messenger Service’. While the messages are basically harmless as they cannot contain links that you can click can cause the sky to fall, they can be very annoying and can contain inappropriate messages.
The easiest way for a home user to overcome the problem is to stop the Messenger Service as they normally do not need it. If the Messenger Service is not running then you wouldn’t receive those annoying messages.
You can stop the messenger service and also disable it completely. You need to be logged on with admin rights in order to make this change.
- Start Computer Management Console (either RIGHT click on My Computer and choose “Manage”, Choose Computer Management from the Administrative Tools menu on the Start menu (if enabled) or From the Administrative Tools Control Panel applet.
- Expand the “Services and Applications” tree.
- Click on “Services” to bring up the list of services installed on your machine.
- Find the Service called “Messenger”.
- Right click on it and choose “Stop” to stop the service.
- Once the service has been stopped, right click on it again and choose properties.
- Change the “Startup Type” from Automatic to either “Manual” (which allows you or an application to start it again but it isn’t started when the machine is rebooted) or “Disabled” (which means the service will not start and cannot be started until the option is changed back to “Automatic” or “Manual”).
- Close the computer management console.
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