Related:
When XPPro first came out, I was given the following to remove and negate problems with the pesky Messenger.
This worked for me and others. I admit, I am not - have not studied this area so if someone will take a look , advise and let me know if this is still appplicable I would appreciate it. I still pass this onto to folks and need to know.
---
Who wants a super easy way to remove MSN Messanger from XP?
I just upgraded to XP Pro on my laptop and I could not remove the annoying MSN Messanger program since it is run through so many other programs (i.e. the dreaded "Sharing Violation"). Here is a super easy way to disable and remove this very annoying and intrusive program for good from XP.
Simply cut the command line below and paste it into your run dialog box and it will be gone. I have used this repeatedly and it works everytime. I tried other solutions to no avail. So here it is:
------------- CUT BELOW ---------------
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
-------------STOP CUT ----------------
Service pack 1 actually changed it to disabled by default. If you want to make sure its deactivated go to start>run> type "msconfig" without the quotes. at the far right you'll see a tab for startup. Look for a box for windows messenger and make sure its unchecked. While you're there you might as well uncheck a couple of more programs that don't need to start at boot up. All they do is slow you down and sap system resources. Quicktime, office, winamp, things like that. If you don't recognise it, don't touch it, or google it to see if its nesessary to have it start up with the computer. I've had clients who had 30 or 40 programs starting with every time they booted up, and just unchecking some little boxes cut their load time in half. After you restart the computer a box will come up talking about using selective start up or something along those lines. Uncheck the box that says "show this screen each time I boot up" then hit OK. Cheers,
Shawn
Here's a site where you can find out what those things are that are running on your machine.
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm