unwanted pop ups

Okay I have a p3 850 running windows XP. About two weeks ago I started noticing that everyday when I log on to Win XP I have an advertisment pop up (sometimes 2 or 3) on my screen waiting for me. My wife notices the same thing when she logs in on her screen name. The title of the popup (on the taskbar) is "mesenger" and they go away when you close them but VERY annoying to have to do this every day.

I have used the Cntrl Alt Delete to see if any program is running and the only thing running is "Mesenger". I used MSCONFIG on the run screen to make a selective start up and I turned everything off on the start up tab. This did not help. How can I get rid of these annoying popups?? No other program is on and I have my web browser closed. Help !!

JB

 

These pop-ups are coming through an XP hole called "Messenger"
(Not windows messenger, but a service that is only supposed to work in an internal network, also called messenger)
Go to start/run, type services.msc, and press ok.
When services pops up scroll down to messenger and right click on it. Go to properties and disable in startup type. Press apply, then ok. That will stop it coming up again.

 

Okay thanks ... I just tried that. Wont know until later if it worked but I am sure it will.

How exactly does this work? Were those ads coming from the internet? Is it part of Microsoft ? Why did it start two weeks or so ago?

Anyway ... Thanks again!

 

One problem with disabling messenger, some legitimate system services use it to deliver messages to the user.

The real solution to this problem is to fix your firewall, it's a wake-up call that you don't have proper firewall protection!