messenger service pop ups driving me mad

[Katherine]

REcently I keep getting these pop up windows on my PC (the sort with the grey background) which say messenger service. They are usually from some porn site called Janita. This morning I even got one asking if I was getting spam from Janita and if so contact the watchdog on a premium rate number. Ha! Yeah sure! They seem to be latching on to my IP address but there doesn't seem to be any way of stopping them. Does anyone else have this problem or any suggestions on how to deal with it as its getting really irriatating

[breeze]

Yes I get them all the time and they are driving me nuts, Janita looking for a boy in uk, don't know how to get rid of them though.

[lucy123]

Katherine - you can turn these off. Go to your "Administrative tools" (either in the programmes menu or the Control panel), and select "Services". In the right hand window you'll see all the services - if you scroll down to the "m"s you'll see it says "Messenger". right click on it and select properties, and then where it says "Startup type" select "disabled". Click apply.

It will warn you that certain other services will not work, but none of these will really be useful to you unless you are part of a large network (and even then there are other ways of doing these things). HTH

[Katherine]

Lucy123 thanks so much. I knew it was worthwhile asking on mumsnet.

[katierocket]

hey thanks for that Lucy 123 - they have been really bugging me too!

[katierocket]

oh b*** I just did what you suggested Lucy 123 and disabled it then about 5 mins later received a pop up - do I have to restart to make the changes active?

[lucy123]

oops. Sometimes when you disable a service it doesn't actually stop the service. You could either restart, or go back into the services console, click on the Messenger service and then click the stop button (or I think you can do that by right clicking too)

[Ange8]

I had this problem and, although I disabled Messenger, it made no difference. I checked Google groups for advice, and was told to check that the firewall that comes as standard with windows XP was enabled. I found out when I checked that the firewall wasn't enabled and, now it is, I have no more problems. If you are running XP, you can enable the firewall by going to Start, Control Panel, Network and Internet Connections, Network Connections, (Right click on your internet connection), Properties, Advanced, (Put tick in box).