How to disable Windows Messenger on Windows XP

From ArticleWorld

While not necessarily an unpopular tool among developers, Windows Messenger has been known to be quite prone to security problems. In time, many system administrators and home users decided to ignore its services and block it through a firewall or disabling it.

Disabling Windows Messenger is not likely to affect your programs, unless depend on it for their functions. This is rarely the case, since programmers have long realized that Windows Messenger is usually disabled by knowledgeable users.

Here is how to disable Windows Messenger. You should note that preventing it from loading on start-up is not enough. Other applications can start it (Outlook, for example, will usually do).

Procedure

1. Go to Start, Run and in the text box enter gpedit.msc.
2. Co to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components and into the Windows Messenger section.
3. This is where you can select whether Windows Messenger starts at boot time and whether it runs at all. You can disable both.

Notes

If you only need to prevent Windows Messenger from running on a certain user account, you can use the section at User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Messenger.

Despite what many people seem to think, Windows Messenger is not an IM application. Microsoft had great plans for it, but they never quite made it, partly because of the bad implementation, but mostly due to the security problems.