I'm new to XP and lots of time I'm playing games online and these dialog boxes with 'Messenger Service' as the title, pop up with a message about how to remove spyware and blah blah blah. Can I block these messenger service with a firewall on?
Stop messenger service (it's not MSN or windows messenger, but a network service)
-right click on my computer icon
-click on manage
-look for the services
-stop messenger service (right-click)
-change startup to manual in the service's property
That should stop the popups, but if you have them it means that you are connected without any protection on the internet, I'd strongly advise the use of a router/firewall or a firewall software (ZoneAlarm)
If you searched you would've got a million results on this. I think someone needs to make a thread on popups, Messenger and spyware and a mod to stick it.
But yeah, Messenger was a service created so that office administrators could send messages to their employees on a network easily, but people have learned how to hijack it and use it for advertising. You're better off disabling it completely instead of setting it to manual, as another program may cause Messenger to start back up again if set to manual. 99.9% of home users have no need for it.
Originally posted by Shannon If you searched you would've got a million results on this. I think someone needs to make a thread on popups, Messenger and spyware and a mod to stick it.
